All right, Matthew chapter 19,
beginning at verse one. Let's read that verse. It says,
and it came to pass that when Jesus had finished these sayings,
he departed from Galilee. Now, he'd been there about two
years, and he came into the coast of Judea beyond Jordan, this
area. And verse two says, and great
multitudes followed him. That was common in that day. And he healed them there. And
of course here, he'd been preaching, he'd been healing in and around
Galilee, as I said, for the better part of two years, and now he
goes into this region called Judah beyond Jordan. Great multitudes,
many people, and he healed them. Once again, we see this wonderful
example of Christ the great physician. I love that. that identification
of our Savior, the healer, and the great physician, and proving
his deity, his power over disease and even over death. When you
think about his dealing with Lazarus, for example, in John
chapter 11, and others. But his authority, his power
over all diseases, And this shows that as God in sinless human
flesh, He had power over sin, sin itself. All disease and all
of these things that we suffer in this life, they're the consequences
of sin. And we know that we suffer these
consequences because this body, this physical body is dead because
of sin. And that's in the process of
dying. That's what growing old is all
about. That's what getting sick is all about. It may be that
the Lord will heal us of these physical ailments for a time,
but not permanently. You know, when you hear this
false gospels of health and wealth gospels, You know, how they are,
and they talk about, you know, well if you're sick, you know,
it's some demon inside of you, and if you have enough faith,
you can be healed. And they don't understand what
they're talking about. You know, and I especially, that
passage in Isaiah chapter 53, it says, by his stripes you are
healed. How many false preachers have
you heard take that verse and apply it to physical healing?
And it's not talking about physical healing at all. It's talking
about the spiritual healing that Christ brings to every one of
his people, and that healing lasts forever and ever and ever.
But he is the great physician. And he has power over sin, which
is the source of all disease and death. He's conquered it.
And I've got in your lesson, our great physician heals us
of the sin that plagues us spiritually. And how did he do it? By being
made sin for us, that we might be made the righteousness of
God in him. And when you look at these passages,
Christ healed them all when he confronted them. They didn't
walk away unhealed physically. Now, that doesn't mean that all
who were healed physically were also healed spiritually. Not
at all. In fact, there's a passage, and
I can't remember what it is, I didn't cite it in your lesson,
where he healed some lepers. Some of them returned to glorify
God. Others just went their way. And
so some who are healed physically are also healed spiritually,
but some aren't. But His willingness to heal and
His power to heal all who came to Him testifies of his power
to heal all of his sheep, his people, his elect, who come to
him for eternal salvation and eternal life. He has that power.
He has, he's willing. You know people, sometimes when
they, when false professors want to deny God's electing grace,
A lot of times they'll come back with an objection, which makes
no sense, but they'll come back with an objection and say, well,
if I'm one of God's leg, it doesn't matter what I do. If I'm not,
if I come to Christ and want salvation, if I'm not one of
His leg, it does me no good. That's a lie. First of all, what
does the scripture teach us? It teaches that none of us by
nature will come to Him for salvation. The natural man receiveth not
the things of the Spirit of God, neither can he know them. They're
spiritually discerned. You will not come to me that
you might have life. No man can come to me except
the Father which has sent me draw him. And then secondly,
it teaches that anyone who desires salvation from the God of this
Bible, through the Christ of this Bible, not only can have
it, but he or she will have it. All that the Father giveth me
shall come to me, and him that cometh to me I will in no wise
cast out. But we're also taught in the
scripture that all who come to him, they do so because he draws
them with the invincible, sovereign power of his grace. And he doesn't
draw men and women to him, sinners unto him, to turn them away.
Anyone who wants salvation God's way. Now that's the key. It's
not just that you want salvation. Everybody wants to be saved.
Everybody wants to live forever. Everybody wants to be healed.
But do you want to be healed God's way, saved God's way? And the problem is man by nature
wants it his own way in a way that gives him some room to boast,
some room to glory. But when God brings his people
for spiritual healing, they bow to his way of salvation, his
way of righteousness, his way of healing. So that's the issue. All right, verse three now. It
says, the Pharisees also came unto him, tempting him, that
means they were gonna put him to the test, they're gonna test
him. And their goal is not to find truth. Understand that? I don't mind anybody testing
me, questioning me, if their goal is to find the truth. Sometimes
we find it together. I've had people ask me questions
and I say I don't know the answer to it. But we can find it if
the Lord has an answer for it in his book. And sometimes I
do know the answer to it and I can give them the answer. So
if they test, you know the Bible says test the spirits, that's
the preachers. So I don't mind you questioning
me or asking me, and if I don't know it, I'll tell you, I don't
know. But let's look together and see if there is an answer
in the book of God. Now if there's no answer in the
book of God, then we're both gonna walk away not knowing it.
Because God reveals, he hasn't revealed it. But here these Pharisees,
they came unto him testing him and saying unto him. Now they're
trying to trap him, that's what they're trying to do. They're
trying to trip him up. discredit him they wanted to
destroy him because they hated his message and why do they hate
his message and I always think you know whenever I see this
I always think about John 3 19 through 20 and I've got that
cited in your lesson where it says and this is the condemnation
that light which is the gospel of Christ Christ is the light
and his truth the gospel The light has come into the world
and men love darkness and hate the light. Now why? Why would
anybody love darkness and hate light? Because their deeds were
evil. And that's what happened here.
The message of the gospel of God's truth, God's grace, God's
righteousness in Christ exposed the legal self-righteousness
of the Pharisees that all of their supposed good works were
evil deeds because they did not glorify and honor God. You think
about the Pharisee and the publican in Luke 18. He said, I thank
God that I'm not like other men. I'm not like this publican. Publicans were thieves. They
were tax collecting thieves, hated by everybody. Well, don't
you thank God that you're not like that? Now, don't get me
wrong now. You have the potential to commit
every known sin. But if you're not a thief, a
murderer, a whoremonger, a robber, if you're not, don't you thank
God that God has kept you from being that way? Well, I do. But
here's the point. That is not my righteousness
before God. My righteousness before God is
Christ and Christ alone. And that was the problem with
the Pharisees. So if a person who says, well, I'm an honest
person in my business dealings, all right? Why would that be
evil? Well, in the sight of men, here
on this earth, it's not evil, but in the sight of God, thinking
that that's what saves you or recommends you unto God is evil.
And so the Pharisees, with all of their supposed morality and
religion and sincerity, what did Christ say to them in John
8, 44? You're of your father, the devil. and you do his evil
bidding. You're liars, you're blind, leading
the blind, you're open sepulchers. Outwardly, you appear righteous
unto men, but inwardly, you're full of dead men's bones, hypocrites,
all of that. Well, obviously, they hated that
message. It takes the Spirit of God to
bring sinners like us to say, Lord, you're right. You're right. All of my religion, all of my
works-oriented salvation, and all of my hope, all of my assurance
based upon what I'm doing for you is nothing but dung, Paul
said. in Philippians chapter three.
It takes the spirit of God. Well, what was it? You see in
Christ's life here on earth, you see several times that the
Pharisees would come up to him and try to trap him with different
questions. Well, today's question was marriage and divorce. They
wanted to trap him on that. It says in verse three, the Pharisees
also came unto him, tempting him and saying unto him, is it
lawful for a man to put away his wife for every cause? Now the key there is for every
cause. And you know that it's not lawful,
it's not right, it's not moral for a man just to divorce his
wife for any reason whatsoever that he comes up with. You know
better than that. And with all of this, think about, there were
two schools of thought about divorce among the Jewish rabbis. One of them was that a man could
divorce his wife for any reason, and that was male chauvinism. That's what it was. It was misogynistic. You know, a man's, he's the authority,
you know, the woman's nothing, and that's the way they looked
at it, and that's wrong. That's not, the issue of marriage,
the first institution, human institution that God gave was
a sacred thing. And the man, you know what the
Bible says in Ephesians 5? Husbands, love your wives as
Christ loved the church. Now think about that. That doesn't make you think that
the wife is nothing, has no rights. That puts her in a place of honor. How did Christ love us? And you
know, any time you deal with this issue, you need to deal
with the issue of marriage. So they wanted to know, is it
lawful? The other school was that the marriage contract couldn't
be broken by anything. It didn't matter what either
partner did, it couldn't be broken by anything. So one school said
for anything, and another school said not for anything at all. And they were both wrong in that
situation. So keep in mind, and I put in
your lesson here, keep in mind why John the Baptist was beheaded
by Herod Antipas. Remember what? Herod Antipas
stole his brother's wife and married her. And John the Baptist
publicly pointed that out, how sinful that was. And that's why
Herod eventually got rid of him. And I think the Pharisees too,
they wanted the same to happen to Jesus of Nazareth. But it
didn't, so okay. So look at verse four. We'll
read his whole answer here, verse four through six. He answered
and said to them, have you not read that he which made them
at the beginning made them male and female? And said, for this
cause shall a man leave father and mother and shall cleave to
his wife. And they twain, they too, shall
be one flesh. And wherefore they say no more
twain but one flesh, no more two. In other words, no more
individuals but husband and wife in the marriage union. What therefore
God hath joined together, let not man put asunder. So the first
thing he does here, he establishes the law of marriage, which is
a sacred thing. And first of all, make no mistake
about it, it's between male and female. No other. The idea of two men marrying
or two women is not biblical, it's immoral. It's wrong. The two reasons that God instituted
marriage, number one, for the happiness and the continuation
of the human race. That's number one. And number
two, to be a beautiful, glorious picture of Christ and his church. Christ is called the bridegroom,
the church is called the bride, the husband and the wife. Paul
said that in preaching the gospel and by the power of the Spirit
bringing sinners into union with Christ. He said it's a marriage
union, and he put it this way in what is 2 Corinthians 11. He said, I've espoused you to
one husband. You're to be loyal to one husband. You're not to set your sights
on another. That's why he said, I fear less
the way that Satan Deceived Eve by his subtlety that you'll be
deceived by these false preachers who want you to turn to another
another Jesus he said I'll never forget when I was talking to
a freewill Baptist preacher one time and And he taught well we
all believe in Jesus, and I said well. How do you know that? Except
by the doctrine of Christ. I said there are false Christ.
He said where do you find that I? I took him to 2 Corinthians
11, another Jesus, another gospel, another spirit. He said, well,
I didn't even know that was in the Bible. I said, well, there
it is. There it is. A false Christ. And sadly, that's what the world
today is into, this false Christ. But how do we know the true Christ?
How do we know who our true husband is? By the doctrine of Christ,
the doctrine of his glorious person. Who is he? Well, he's
God manifest in the flesh. What did he do? What did he accomplish?
Well, he saved his people from their sins. He didn't try to
save them. Christ didn't try to save his bride. He didn't
make salvation possible for his bride. if she would cooperate. Christ, it's kind of like, there's
a beautiful picture in the Old Testament between the prophet
Hosea and his wife who was named Gomer. And she was on the slave
block of sin and he went and he bought her and he brought
her to himself. That's the way God does us. He bought us. I've
got in your lesson here where it talks about how Christ His people are His bride according
to the purpose of grace. In other words, she didn't deserve
it, didn't earn it. See, our position as the bride
of Christ, we didn't earn one blessing of it. And then by the
purchase of His grace, He redeemed us by His blood, just like Hosea
paid the redemption price to get Gomer. And then the power
of his grace, the cords of love and grace draws his bride to
him with an invincible calling. And that's how it happens and
we're espoused to him. And so the bride of Christ, his
wife, stands before him, cleansed from all her sins by his blood,
dressed in the robe of his righteousness by which she is justified, made
holy and fit for him, her husband. She's made us fit, or he has
made us fit. And so marriage, that first institution
in the Bible, Genesis chapter two, And there was no provision
given there for divorce or separation, none at all. And just like Christ
says here, what God hath joined together, let not man put asunder. But now the marriage union, think
about it. Husbands, love your wives as
Christ loved the church. Wives, be submitted to your husband
as unto the Lord. That's a great union. And it
works if both are committed to it, and they deny themselves,
committed and devoted to the safety, the preservation, and
the eternal well-being, just like Christ is to his bride.
So what therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.
So here you have that beautiful picture of Christ and his church.
Well, look at verse seven. Matthew 19. Now here's their
answer. Well, they say unto him, why
did Moses then command to give a writing of divorcement and
to put her away? Well, he saith unto them, Moses,
because of the hardness of your hearts. Now there's the key,
all right? He suffered, he allowed, he permitted,
He tolerated you to put away your wives, but from the beginning
it was not so. Now there was no provision made
for it from the beginning. Well, first of all, Moses did
not command them to do that. He didn't issue forth a command
at all, but he did permit it and tolerate it and allowed it.
And why? Well, basically you can put it
several ways. We live in a sin-cursed world. We're sinners. We can't rise
above it as far as being sinful. We who are saved by the grace
of God are commanded to fight it, to war against it, not to
give in to it. But sometimes that just doesn't
happen. How you gonna deal with it? You know this thing about
marriage and divorce, it's been an issue. Different people, different
denominations or whatever you wanna call them, and even among
believers there's different views of it and how you do it. Moses granted divorce in certain
instances in order to curtail a vile and liberal custom, which
had overtaken Israel. Divorce for any reason, and we
live in a world that that's happening. They say right now about half,
maybe more than half of people who get married will end up divorced.
And why? Well, it's, why is it? It's because of selfishness.
In other words, when a man and a woman marry, they're to live
for each other. And the man is to be the head
of the house. You know, I had a lady ask me
one time, she was getting married to a man, she said, well, why
do I have to submit to him? Or why does he have to be the
head of the home? And I told him this, I said,
well, I hope in your marriage, I didn't perform the wedding,
just to let you know, but I said, in your lives as a husband and
wife, I hope that you agree on every decision you have to make.
I hope you do. Now, you and I know that's not
gonna happen. But when you come to a point
where a decision has to be made and you can't agree on it, who's
gonna make the decision? Well, the Bible says the man
is. Now, he's to take his wife's opinion or her advice into consideration. He's not to rule as a tyrant
or a despot. He's not to leave her out of
the mix. She may be smarter than him in
a lot of ways in different areas. But he's to make the final decision.
That's the way it is. Well, Christ is the head of the
church and the husband is to typify Christ. And the wife is
to typify the church. What it says here is because
of the hardness of your heart, because of sin, and look at verse
nine. He says, and I say unto you,
whosoever shall put away his wife, except it be for fornication,
now that's adultery, going outside the marriage. and shall marry
another, committeth adultery, and whoso marrieth her which
is put away, doth commit adultery. Now that's the sin of adultery.
And this is what divorce was allowed for. If the man or the
woman committed adultery, it doesn't necessarily mean they
had to divorce. There could be repentance, there
could be forgiveness, and the marriage stay together. But that
was allowed. Now, does that make it all right?
Does that make it all a sinless transaction? No. No. It makes us adulterers. But now
think about this now, before you come down hard on this one
or that one, we're all adulterers. But if we're in Christ, we're
forgiven. Now certainly we're not to use that as an excuse
for sin, but you can, listen, you can come up with all kinds
of different situations. What about a believer who's married
to an unbeliever? What about two people who just
cannot come to any agreement on this? What do you do? Sometimes you can't do anything.
But here's my point. Divorce is not the unforgivable
sin, folks. It's not. Those who are married
and remarried, you know, you say, well, they're sinners. Yeah,
they are, but so am I. I don't have any reason to look
down on them. Sometimes people get married
before they're converted and then after they're converted.
There's a problem I know of a man I was talking to a man up in
North Georgia on the phone a couple weeks ago And he said his his
first wife left him over the gospel She didn't want anything
to do with the gospel. She hated it so much. She wouldn't
stay with him now the Apostle Paul over in 1st Corinthians
7 he gave another reason to tolerate it and And that was when abandonment,
one partner abandons the other. And the one who wants the marriage
to last has no choice. So the thing of divorce and remarriage
is to be avoided at all costs. But because of this sinful world
we live in, because of the weakness of the flesh, it sometimes happens,
and it's to be tolerated. And I don't believe that we have
any reason to look down on a person and say, well, you're less of
a Christian than I am, or you're less of a believer, or you're
a second-class Christian. Not at all. Some people say,
well, in those cases, they can't hold office in the church. There's
a lot of argument about that and I'm not going to go into
that today. But if there is adultery or if there is desertion, either
physical or emotional, whatever, then it's to be tolerated. And
I'll never forget this, I was talking to a guy from England,
of all places, and I talked to him about God tolerating divorce,
and he said, oh, oh no, God doesn't tolerate sin. And I looked at
him on the phone, I said, are you kidding me? He tolerates
you, don't he? That's what I told him. God's long suffering with us. even in our sin. That doesn't
mean he excuses it. It doesn't mean he encourages
it. It doesn't mean he gives us a reason to just forget about
it and go on and not deal with it. Sometimes he chastises us. I had a man tell me one time,
he said, well, God chastises all of our sin. No, he does not. If he did, we wouldn't be able
to hang our heads, hold our heads up. We'd be beat down all the
time. But he does chastise his children. There are consequences to our
actions, especially those who get divorced and there's children
involved. That's really a problem. Because
then you gotta, where you gonna live? All of that, you know about
all that. Well, look at verse 10 through
12. His disciples say unto him, if the case of the man be so
with his wife, it is not good to marry. In other words, if
that's the case, then let's just not get married. But he said
unto them, all men cannot receive this saying, and they to whom
it is given. Men and women have natural sexual desires. Now, I'm not embarrassed to say
that, are you? That's a fact of life, all right? And he says in verse 12, for
there are some eunuchs, they've been castrated, either naturally,
born that way, or physically, who were born from their mother's
womb, and there are some eunuchs which were made eunuchs of men,
born or made that way. And he says, and there be eunuchs
which have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven's sake.
They just chose to be that way. You know, Paul was not a eunuch,
but he chose not to marry. And he said, he that is able
to receive it, let him receive it. All right, Paul is simply
saying there, if you can remain unmarried, go ahead. But if your
desires burn within you, it's better to marry than to burn.
He says that. Now that doesn't mean that you're
to get married just only to relieve your sexual desire. If you get
married, get married for the right reason, because of love
and because you want to reflect the image of Christ and his church,
and you want to make it work, and you want all of that. But
he's very practical here, isn't he? He said, if you can do it,
okay, but if you can't, get married. Understand it. But this thing
about marriage and divorce, people, a lot of people's view of it
is nothing more than self-righteous legalism. And that's it. But understand this. We're all
forgiven sinners, if we're in Christ. Now, not all without
except, but if we're in Christ, we're all forgiven sinners. Our
sins are covered by the blood of Christ, and we're to rejoice
in that no matter what our situation. Okay.