³¹ “It has been said, ‘Anyone who divorces his wife must give her a certificate of divorce.’ ³² But I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, makes her the victim of adultery, and anyone who marries a divorced woman commits adultery.

 

Divorce is so unpopular that we have a new approach to relationships, which excludes marriage and therefore divorce. Why not build a new society on the basis of negotiated arrangements and avoid the complications of legally binding relationships? We can say good-bye to adultery and live as free spirits. It is de facto what our society is. You have sex with whom you feel like it, co-habit with whoever will have you and if you marry you do it simply to have an excuse for a over-expensive sequence of revelry that you cannot afford. After which you are stuck in a relationship which is ‘until you have paid your debts’ rather than ‘until death do us part’

 

So this blunt and uncomfortable scripture asks the question

 

 What is it about Marriage which makes it special?

 

The answer to this question lies at the heart of our gospel. In the Bible marriage is used as a metaphor for faithfulness; adultery is a synonym for unfaithfulness. God calls himself ‘husband’ to say he is faithful.

 

Let me illustrate this.

Ephesians 5:25-40

²⁵ Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her ²⁶ to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word,²⁷ and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless….

... ²⁹ After all, no-one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as Christ does the church— ³⁰ for we are members of his body.

 

In the Old Testament read Hosea who lives out a prophetic statement.

Hosea 1 page 900  ² When the LORD began to speak through Hosea, the LORD said to him, Go, take to yourself an adulterous wife and children of unfaithfulness, because the land is guilty of the vilest adultery in departing from the LORD.

³ So he married Gomer daughter of Diblaim, and she conceived and bore him a son.

Hosea 2 : ² Rebuke your mother, rebuke her, for she is not my wife, and I am not her husband. Let her remove the adulterous look from her face and the unfaithfulness from between her breasts.

³ Otherwise I will strip her naked and make her as bare as on the day she was born; I will make her like a desert, turn her into a parched land, and slay her with thirst.

⁴ I will not show my love to her children, because they are the children of adultery.

⁵ Their mother has been unfaithful and has conceived them in disgrace.

Hosea 3

¹ The LORD said to me, Go, show your love to your wife again, though she is loved by another and is an adulteress. Love her as the LORD loves the Israelites, though they turn to other gods and love the sacred raisin cakes.

² So I bought her for fifteen shekels of silver and about a homer and a lethek of barley.

³ Then I told her, You are to live with me for many days; you must not be a prostitute or be intimate with any man, and I will live with you.

⁴ For the Israelites will live for many days without king or prince, without sacrifice or sacred stones, without ephod or idol.

⁵ Afterwards the Israelites will return and seek the LORD their God and David their king. They will come trembling to the LORD and to his blessings in the last days.

The tale is more like what you would find in EastEnders but God declares his husband quality here. While Israel is unfaithful, he will do everything he can to rescue her and show his love, because he is faithful.

 

So we read the other Sunday from Ephesians 5:25-40

²⁵ Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her ²⁶ to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word,²⁷ and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless….

... ²⁹ After all, no-one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as Christ does the church— ³⁰ for we are members of his body.

 

Jesus is paralleled with Hosea. He is the one who acts like a husband and give himself for the church. Faithfulness beyond breaking point. He loved us while we were his enemies.

 

II do not want you to read anything sexist into this. The ideal is that both husband and wife are examples of faithfulness. So when describing heaven, John says what he sees, and what he sees is

 

Revelation 21 page 1249

¹ Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea.

² I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband.

³ And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God.

⁴ He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.

⁵ He who was seated on the throne said, I am making everything new!

The ultimate experience will be that we the church, purified and dressed will be married to Jesus forever. Safety and security and an everlasting relationship is described as marriage.

 Marriage is about faithfulness.

God is faithful and marriage is about faithfulness, so marriage is designed to reflect the faithfulness of God in relationship.    

At that point is becomes the measure of all relationships.  So business partnerships are to be marked out by faithfulness.  At work honesty and  reliability are the hallmarks of the disciple and that should reflect honesty and reliability in the marriage relationship.

For family and friends we need to spend time talking to them and there is a need for acceptance of the things we don’t like about each other,  forgiving each others faults. These qualities are vital for husbands and wives.  In our relationships with our neighbours we need to respect each others rights, accept the things we do not like about them which involves forgiveness, and find time for them. Again these should reflect those of a marriage. 

 Honesty, reliability, talking to each other, acceptance, forgiving one another, find time for each other.  In The marriage Book, by Nicki and Sila Lee, the section heading s reflect exactly these things:

Building Strong foundations – planning to succeed

The art of communication – talking and listening

Love in action – words and actions

Resolving conflict – appreciating differences

The power of forgiveness – how intimacy can be restored.

Then uniquely to marriage:

Parents and in-laws

Good Sex

I can recommend the book to any married couple as it is a good starting point to restoring the joy of marriage.

 

 Marriage is so significant that divorce although sometimes necessary is a serious blow.

 

Lets look at Matthew 19:3-9

 

³ Some Pharisees came to him to test him. They asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any and every reason?”

⁴ “Haven’t you read,” he replied, “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’

⁵ and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’? ⁶ So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”

⁷ “Why then,” they asked, “did Moses command that a man give his wife a certificate of divorce and send her away?”

⁸ Jesus replied, “Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard. But it was not this way from the beginning. ⁹ I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another woman commits adultery.”

 

We need to understand the context here.

“Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any and every reason?”  At the time it was. For any and every reason. But exclusively the right of the husband.  So the divorce law was both liberal and sexist. Jesus’ answer is that divorce itself is not what God intended. And this speaks to us today in our liberal society. The rules that operate in the society at large are not ours. We believe marriage is of God. An divorce in our community is a declaration of breaking vows made before God, of separating what we believed God had brought together, and the break up of the one flesh back into two. But Jesus points out divorce is necessary because of the hardness of hearts. Where faithfulness has been breached, and there is no evidence of forgiveness and reconciliation, then divorce may be applicable. But note that adultery maybe a ground for divorce but it does not lead inexorably to divorce. In many cases, adultery can be faced up to and in Christ there is forgiveness and reconciliation and healing. The expression we use in English law is actually quite good “ The irretrievable breakdown of marriage” However, it is interpreted so freely that is can mean any and every reason.

1.     So divorce is necessary because of the hardness of our hearts

2.     It is not to be considered except as a last resort.

3.     It is not the automatic response to adultery.

4.     In our view Irreconcilable breakdown of marriage means that at least one of the partners is unwilling to be faithful.

I consider reasons for divorce to be

1.      Unrepentant adultery because it is an abuse of the faithfulness principle

2.     Unrepentant violence and bullying because it is an abuse of the submit to one another principle.

 

 There is a third aspect that Paul speaks of in 1Corinthians 7: 12-17

¹² To the rest I say this (I, not the Lord): If any brother has a wife who is not a believer and she is willing to live with him, he must not divorce her.

¹³ And if a woman has a husband who is not a believer and he is willing to live with her, she must not divorce him.

¹⁴ For the unbelieving husband has been sanctified through his wife, and the unbelieving wife has been sanctified through her believing husband. Otherwise your children would be unclean, but as it is, they are holy.

¹⁵ But if the unbeliever leaves, let him do so. A believing man or woman is not bound in such circumstances; God has called us to live in peace.

¹⁶ How do you know, wife, whether you will save your husband? Or, how do you know, husband, whether you will save your wife?

¹⁷ Nevertheless, each one should retain the place in life that the Lord assigned to him and to which God has called him. This is the rule I lay down in all the churches.

 

I believe this a passive response on the part of a Christian, to allow a divorce rather than seek it. It is fundamentally about the problem of relating to someone who does not share your faith. We have consistently taught that Christians should not marry non-Christians for that reason using ‘do not be yoked to unbelievers’ as the basic principle.

 In summary, what we see is that Jesus’ view of marriage is coloured by his character, he is faithful and therefore marriage is about faithfulness. The problem then with our society is that it does not value faithfulness because it does not value God. But we need to uphold our marriages not by buttressing them with repressive laws but by giving the time, and energy they need the faithfulness, the submission, the forgiving the accepting of one another and all that faithfulness entails.

 

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