Sermon Tone Analysis

Reading:

Michael Cloete

The Permanency of Marriage ()

Reading:

“Jesus then left that place and went into the region of Judea and across the Jordan.

Again crowds of people came to him, and as was his custom, he taught them.

Some Pharisees came and tested him by asking, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?” “What did Moses command you?” he replied.

They said, “Moses permitted a man to write a certificate of divorce and send her away.”

“It was because your hearts were hard that Moses wrote you this law,” Jesus replied.

“But at the beginning of creation God ‘made them male and female.’

‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.’

So they are no longer two, but one.

Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate.”

When they were in the house again, the disciples asked Jesus about this.

He answered, “Anyone who divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery against her.

And if she divorces her husband and marries another man, she commits adultery.””

(, NIV84)

Introduction

We come this morning to one of those hot topics that quite easily becomes a source of contention.

But it is a matter that we would do well to carefully bring our attention to.

If we consider that family life and a solid family structure is critical to the wellbeing of society in general (which according to God’s word and secular studies is the case) then we need to pay careful attention to what God has to say on this matter of marriage and divorce.

Sadly, in our day, because our expectations of marriage are rarely met, because of the hardness of our hearts and our wrong perspective, divorce is now one of the expectations that many people have for marriage.

The reality that you’ll be married multiple times is simply excepted today as the way it might be.

The same was true in Jesus’ day.

Divorce was simply a way of life.

It wasn’t surprising that Jesus called them “an adulterous generation."

To the Secular Community of our day, there is not too much disapproval regarding the issue of divorce.

If your needs aren’t getting met in your marriage, divorce is simply one of the options, if not option number one.

The same was true in Jesus’ day.

In contemporary Roman culture, not only could a man divorce his wife for any reason, but a wife could also divorce her husband, something that was taboo until that time.

BUT, to the Spiritual Community of our day, this is a matter of extreme importance.

What we will consider this morning is God’s ideal and His plan.

The exhortation from that will be to develop within our own minds and hearts an attitude of submission to God’s will, even when that may not be so easy.

1. Context (v.1)

As we begin our study of this text, the first thing that we need to consider is the “Context”, and this is conveyed for us in Mark by verse 1.

He writes:

“Jesus then left that place and went into the region of Judea and across the Jordan.

Jesus leaves the area of Galilee that he had been ministering, and he heads South towards the region of Judea.

This territory was properly the “Land of the Jews.”

It is the region in which the city of Jerusalem itself is situated.

One more point of note that we should keep in our mind concerning this region of Judea is that Herod was the Roman-appointed king of that province.

And so, as Jesus moves into this area, we find that…

Again crowds of people came to him, and as was his custom, he taught them.”

(, NIV84)

It is while Jesus is busy teaching that we find a confrontation that occurs.

And that leads us to our second point of consideration this morning from verse 2.

2. Confrontation (v.2)

And that is this “Confrontation” that comes from the side of the Pharisees:

“Some Pharisees came and tested him by asking, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?”” (, NIV84)

As the Pharisees approached Jesus here, it was as usual not with a desire to learn.

They didn’t come to Jesus to pose a question to him that they had become baffled with, and thus needed clarification on from someone they looked up to.

Furthermore, when we read as we do in Mark’s text that they came to test him, this was not a test to see whether or not he was holding to some orthodox position.

It was also not a test directed at seeing whether they should welcome him into their ranks as a recognized teacher.

No!!

The sole reason that they tested him was to trap him!

They wanted to catch him out, and thus tarnish his reputation, or have some harm befall him.

They wanted to discredit him.

Recall that back in , after Jesus had healed a man with a withered hand on the Sabbath day in the synagogue, the Pharisees were up in arms about this.

And in verse 6 of that chapter, we read:

“Then the Pharisees went out and began to plot with the Herodians how they might kill Jesus.”

(, NIV84)

As we looked at that chapter, we noted the unlikely partnership that this was – Pharisees and Herodians.

The Herodians were those who were in some way linked with or aligned with Herod.

And Herod was no friend of the Jews.

With Jesus now back in Judea, Herod’s territory, we find the Pharisees continuing their onslaught on Jesus, as they will seek to bring a test against him.

And the question that the Pharisees bring to Jesus is one concerning divorce.

They ask Jesus if it is lawful for a man to divorce his wife.

Now we need to ask, what precisely was the nature of their “test.”

In other words, how was it that this question was going to cause a problem for Christ when he answered it.

There are a couple of ways in which this could have caused some difficulty for Christ.

In the first place, there was a strong distinction amongst the Jewish Rabbis in terms of what was permitted when it came to divorce.

There were two broad schools of thought.

The first school of thought was with the Shammai Jews.

They were the conservatives.

They believed that divorce was only permissible for adultery and infidelity – when there had been some form of unfaithfulness.

Then there was the liberal school of thought, which had come into place through the influence of a man named “Hillel”.

The Hillel Jews believed that divorce could be effected for any reason, from indecency, to any kind of unhappiness of a husband towards his wife, even for burning the food etc.

So, these were the two schools of thought, and they dominated the Jewish mind.

And the way Jesus answered here would no doubt have caused division between the different Jews.

If you go across to Matthew’s account of this incident, he adds the detail there that the question the Pharisees asked was not only “Is divorce permissible,” but they in fact asked, “Is divorce permissible for any reason?”

So, they were fishing for the reason that Christ would state that divorce is permissible.

But we need to recognize that there was probably a bigger reason that they introduced this topic of divorce, and that was because of the region they were in, and the possible repercussions it would have had for Christ himself.

You will recall that earlier on in Mark’s Gospel (chapter 6:14ff) Mark had recounted the situation regarding the beheading of John the Baptist.

John had been placed in prison by Herod because he had spoken out about the unlawful marriage between Herod and Herodias (I won’t go into the details again here, but it was a very twisted set of circumstances).

But precisely because John the Baptist spoke out about the unlawful divorce and remarriage that took place, he was put in prison, and eventually beheaded.

Well what a perfect opportunity for the Pharisees.

If they could get Jesus to say the wrong things in this territory of Herod, perhaps they would have the joy of Jesus also being arrested, and even beheaded.

So, the Pharisees come to Jesus, and they confront him.

They test Him.

They want to see how they can catch him out.

3. Counter-Question (v.3)

The initial response from Christ is our next observation from this text, and is found in the form of a “counter-question.”

We’ve seen…

1. Context.

2. Confrontation

And now we look at the Counter Question by Jesus in verse 3… When the Pharisees ask whether divorce is lawful, he asks them,

“What did Moses command you?”

By asking this question, Jesus turns the issue from a hypothetical debate about some unspecified husband to a command directed to them.

By doing this, Jesus began to expose a fatal flaw in the Pharisees’ whole approach to the law.

They come at this particular law asking, “What does it allow me to do?” or, to put it more bluntly, “What can I get away with?”