I might just read those first
16 verses of Mark chapter 10. And I'm deliberately going down
to the children because in Mark's Gospel we have seen continually
the contrast again and again between those who are the Lords
and receive amazing blessings at the hands of this remarkable
man who is God, and those who stand opposed to him. And so
here's another one of those contrasts. Mark chapter 10 verse 1, getting
up, he went from there, so he's moving now from Capernaum toward
Jerusalem. He went from there to the region
of Judea and beyond the Jordan. Crowds gathered around him again
and according to his custom, he once more began to teach them.
Some Pharisees came up to Jesus testing him and began to question
him whether it was lawful for a man to divorce a wife. And he answered and said to them,
what did Moses command you? They said, Moses permitted a
man to write a certificate of divorce and send her away. But Jesus said to them, because
of the hardness of heart, your hardness of heart, he wrote you
this commandment. But from the beginning of creation,
God made them male and female. For this reason a man shall leave
his father and mother, and the two shall become one flesh. So they are no longer two, but
one flesh. What therefore God has joined
together, let no man separate." In the house the disciples began
questioning him about this again. And he said to them, whoever
divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery
against her. And if she divorces her husband
and marries another man, she is committing adultery. and they
were bringing children to him so that he might touch them,
but the disciples rebuked them. But when Jesus saw this, he was
indignant and said to them, Permit the children to come to me. Do
not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. Truly I say to you, whoever does
not receive the kingdom of God, like a child, will not enter
it at all. And he took them in his arms
and began blessing them, laying his hands upon them." So in this remarkable passage
of scripture, we see the Lord Jesus, as the scriptures say,
set his face like a flint to go to Jerusalem. This is getting
to the end, he's no longer in Galilee nor will he go back to
Galilee. He's on his way to Jerusalem
to the cross. And so the Lord Jesus lays down
foundations about his own practice here. Again and again we see
the Lord Jesus at every opportunity he had. He was a preacher. He was teaching, in fact in Mark
chapter 1 there is a crowd of people who want him to come and
heal and bless. And he says, no I didn't come. He said let's go into the next
town. He didn't even leave crowds because it was his practice to
teach. And that's why he came, to preach. And so the miracles that he performed
were just there to confirm the things he taught. and to recommend
it. And the doctrine that he had
were there to explain the feelings and to illustrate them. And so
the Lord Jesus had this crowd gathered to him again and he
taught them. He taught them again. It's a
salutary reminder to us, isn't it? that we need to be continually
taught by the Lord. We need teaching again and again
and again. And there are many reasons. Firstly, there is so much still
that we have to learn. There is so much bounty in this
book, this infinite book. There's so much for us to learn.
And also there is so much that we forget. We just keep forgetting
things all the time. To live in this world with our
sin and the enticements of the world and the world of Satan's
dominion, we just forget. We forget the beauties of the
Gospel, we forget the promises of God and we need to be reminded.
And we need to be reminded of what we already know. It's no
harm being told again the Gospel again and again. The Lord Jesus
was a man of extraordinary courage and boldness. There's not once
in all of the history of his life do we ever have a hint that
he was fearful of any man he ever met. Not once. This territory that he is now
in is Herod's territory. He is now closer to Jerusalem,
closer to the home base of the Pharisees. And John the Baptist
in this same territory, not so very long beforehand, had been
killed by Herod because John the Baptist told Herod the truth
about his adultery and his stealing Philip's wife. In fact John the
Baptist says if you have your brother Philip's wife, as far
as John the Baptist was concerned, the wife Herodias was still Philip's
wife. And so because of her jealousy
and her anger and Herod's weakness, John was killed in this same
territory. So it's not surprising that these
Pharisees who have been plotting to kill Jesus from the 3rd chapter
of Mark's Gospel, from the beginning in a sense of their meeting with
Him, where He declares Himself in Chapter 2 to be God, He declares
Himself to be Lord of the Sabbath, He declares himself to be sovereign
even over the things that they held most precious and they plotted
to kill him. And so these Pharisees again
in this latter part of Mark's Gospel, come to test Jesus about
his words. In the earlier part they tested
him about the things he did, and when he did them, healing
on a Sabbath, plucking grain as he walks through on a Sabbath
day, the things the disciples did, not fasting as much as the
Pharisees and others. But in verse 2 we see that the
Pharisees came up to Jesus testing him. That word testing is a fearful,
fearful word. It's the word that is used of
the Lord Jesus in his temptation in the wilderness. In Matthew
7, the Lord Jesus says to Satan, you shall not put the Lord your
God to the test, you shall not tempt the Lord your God." To
tempt God is in a real sense to tempt God, to tempt Him to
display His holiness and to do so instantly. The Pharisees are
always testing God and tempting God. And if we think the Pharisees
died out 2,000 years ago, we have made a great, great mistake.
The Pharisees are alive and well and as active in this world as
they ever were. In fact, the first big controversy
that the Church had internally was from the children of these
Pharisees. And in Acts chapter 15 verse
10, it's worth going there just to have a quick look at this
verse which has the same word in it. The question is, the big
question that was before the Jerusalem Council is really simple,
isn't it? Is the Lord Jesus sufficient? Has he done enough to get all
of his people into heaven? Has he fulfilled the law of Moses
perfectly? Has he put it away? Do his children
now live under a new law, the law of the Spirit and of life?
and not under the Mosaic Law. These men were zealous. These
men had gone all the way up to Galatia, passionate missionaries,
passionately believing that they were proclaiming the real Jesus. And so the Jerusalem Council
is called and Paul and Barnabas are there along with Titus. And Paul comes to Jerusalem perplexed
about the fact that these modern day Pharisees claim to come from
Jerusalem. They claim to be the ones with
apostolic authority for their law keeping. And to Paul's great
delight, the apostles agree with him. and they realize the danger of
this religion. And Peter stands up before them
in verse 8 and says, So God who knows the heart acknowledged
them by giving them the Holy Spirit just as he did to us and
made no distinction between us and them, no distinction between
Jews and their circumcision and their law keeping, no distinction
between them and us, purifying their hearts by faith. What a wonderful word from God,
that there are people in this world, people here today, who
have hearts that are pure before God, purifying their hearts by
faith. their faith in the faithfulness
of the Lord Jesus. Now therefore, why do you test
God? Why do you tempt God by putting
a yoke on the neck of the disciples which neither our fathers nor
we were able to bear? But We believe that through the
grace of the Lord Jesus Christ we shall be saved in the same
manner as they. So to put a test to God after the resurrection is to
do what these Pharisees were doing to the Lord Jesus here.
It's to test Him, isn't it? It's to tempt God. We are not
to put yokes on God's children. The Lord Jesus' yoke is a light
yoke and an easy yoke. And so these Pharisees come to
Jesus, testing Him, and they began, as all legalists do, they're
always deceitful people. They're always judging others
on the basis of their own righteousness. And here they are with the deceitful
question again. A question prompted by their
desire to have Jesus meet the same fate as John the Baptist.
They began to question him whether it was lawful for a man to divorce
his wife, as if they didn't know what the law said about it. As
if they didn't know. No doubt it was a deeply controversial
question. And if you turn on your sheet
there you have Deuteronomy 24. This is the question. This is
the permission that God had given in Deuteronomy. Deuteronomy 24 verse 1, when
a man takes a wife and marries her and it happens that she finds
no favour in his eyes because he has found some indecency in
her for him. He writes her a certificate of
divorce and puts it in her hand and sends her out from his house.
So there are two issues here that they squabbled about for
hundreds of years. These legalists are always squabbling
about little little dots and chittles. If
she finds no favour, so the question is how do you define that? For
some of the Jews, no favour was for her to lose her attractiveness
to him. For some of the Jews, it was
just to cook breakfast badly. It became a trivial thing to
divorce your wife. and if he has found some indecency
in her. So the door was opened for debates
and the rabbis debated constantly what these things meant. All
the time, whichever side they were on, all the time justifying
their actions. The Lord Jesus is far too wise
to be caught in such trickery. The Lord Jesus perfectly honoured
every tiny part of God's law. And if He didn't perfectly honour
God's law, both in its letter and its spirit, then He cannot
be our Saviour and we are still in our sins. He must be perfect. He must be tested to be perfect
under the law. As much as we should be horrified
by the testing of the Lord Jesus these men did, there is another
sense in which we want to be really thankful. They tested
him again and again. Every public declaration they
were there testing him. Just think of how special it
is for him to be able to say at the end of his life, can any
of you This lot, can any of you find any fault in me?" They couldn't
find any sin in him. Pilate couldn't find any sin
in him. The only thing they could accuse
him of was blasphemy. That he claimed to be God and
therefore he deserved to die in their eyes. But there was
no sin. It's wonderful comfort for sinners
like us to know that the Lord Jesus was tested and tested and
tested again. And He was tested by the most
rigorous examination of a life that God's holy law could ever
bring. So the Lord Jesus turns them
back to Moses. What did Moses command you? And so it's interesting, isn't
it, that they are forced in their response to that to actually
be honest again. See Moses didn't command divorce,
Moses permitted a man. It was a permission, permitted
a man to write a certificate of divorce. and send her away. So the lady
who was sent away had a certificate. The certificate did several things. It meant
that they couldn't be divorced on a whim. They had to write something. It meant
that for the woman, and so often women are the victims in these
circumstances, that the woman was protected. There was a way
out of an abusive relationship. And that she had a certificate
with which she could go to another person. And if she had been abandoned
and he had been unfaithful, she was allowed to remarry so that
she came back under the protection of a husband again. But the Lord Jesus shows them
why Moses allowed this permission. And in verse 5 we see that Jesus
said to them, because of the hardness, your hardness of heart,
he wrote you this commandment. It's not a commendation of them. It's actually a declaration that
such is their wickedness, such is the hardness of their hearts,
that God has to provide a protection from the abuses that women suffer
by abusive men. It's not complimenting them at
all. It's not a command to do it.
It's a permission because of the excess of sin. The Lord Jesus goes on to talk
about marriage, talk about the sanctity of marriage, the creation
of marriage, the beauty of marriage and the picture of marriage and
how special it is. In verse 6 he says, from the
beginning of creation God made them male and female. Let's read some of these verses
in Genesis. It's just a beautiful picture.
And we must keep remembering what Ephesians 5 says. This is
a picture of marriage for us in this world. There are two
institutions that God is passionately concerned about in this world.
One is marriage and the other is the church. One is the human
relationships in this world and that reflects the church, which
is the Lord Jesus' relationship in this world with his people.
Ephesians 5 says this is what he's talking about when he talks
about marriage. Let's go back to Genesis 2. Then the Lord God
formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into
his nostrils the breath of life and man became a living being.
Then God said, verse 18, it is not good for man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable
for him. And the Lord God showed Adam's dominion
over creation by him naming the animals. But his no suitable
helper, verse 20, was found for Adam. So the Lord God caused
a deep sleep to fall upon the man and he slept and he took
one of his ribs and closed up the flesh of that place. The
Lord God fashioned into a woman the rib which he had taken from
man and brought her to man. The man said, this is now bone
of my bones, flesh of my flesh. She shall be called woman because
she was taken out of man. For this reason a man shall leave
his father and mother and be joined to his wife. And they
shall become one flesh. They are no longer two, but one
flesh. And so marriage is something that's been instituted
by God. It's not a human invention. It's
God's institution. It's God's doing and that's what
the Lord Jesus says in Mark 10.9. What therefore God has joined
together, let no man separate. And so marriage is the relationship
which other than our relationship to the Lord Jesus is the greatest
relationship and has the greatest influence. on our society and
on the lives of people within it than any other relationship. You think of the trials and troubles
that befall our society and befall us in this society that have
come about because of broken marriage relationships. It's a tragedy, isn't it? It's
a sign of God's judgment on our world, that the institution of
marriage is now publicly demeaned and publicly scorned. In this
country our Prime Minister lives in open rebellion every day and
parades the world stage with a man who is now called her partner. John the Baptist would never
have used that word. He would have found a much truer
word to describe what Julia Gillard does with her husband and he
with her. And it's just permeated society,
hasn't it? There's not a relationship that
we know of. that's not affected by it in
some way. If our marriage is good and healthy, we need to
praise God, because around us divorce is as common now as marriage,
and broken children are rampant in this world. So God's people
need to stand up for the relationship of marriage. And that's why the
Lord Jesus takes us always, in the scriptures we're always taken
back to first principles. If you read the New Testament
letters, the opening of the New Testament letters is always,
look what God did before the foundation of the world. Unless
we lay our foundations where God laid our foundations, we'll
always be on shifting sand. We need to go back to eternal
things to lay a foundation that begins in eternity past and culminates
in eternity future. Any other foundation that's built
on anything narrower than God's eternal purposes is always going
to flounder. And ultimately this world is
just full of of people, people like you and I, who say, what
is best for me here and right now? That's what hardness of
heart is, isn't it? That's what sends women away
and causes children to be raised without a true knowledge of mother
and father. So marriage is a critical relationship,
isn't it? Marriage involves commitment,
it involves devotion. In fact, commitment is a really
good word for love, isn't it? To be committed to one another.
There's my daughter Kate, and Kate was 21 or 22 years old. had a ceremony with her husband
Rob. That was hugely significant,
wasn't it? At that point, and in that ceremony,
she was saying to Rob, and he was saying to her, that our commitment
to each other is the most important thing in this world. The Lord
Jesus first, but our commitment, our commitment to each other
is more important now than our commitment to our parents. More
important now than our commitment to our brothers and sisters.
And as parents have children, it should also be more important
than our relationship with our children. Because if we're going
to care for our children in this world, our marriage needs to
be cared for first. We do well not to find solace
in the comfort of relationship with our children. that in any
way damages our relationship with our spouse. Marriage involves
commitment. Marriage involves sacrifice. It involves self-denial. On your sheets there you have
those wonderful words from Ephesians, chapter 5. Love your wives, verse 25, just
as Christ also loved the church and gave himself up for her. That's self-sacrifice with a
serious edge to it. Husbands, in verse 28, ought
also to love their own wives as their own bodies. He who loves
his own wife loves himself. And verse 33, nevertheless each
individual among you must also love his own wife even as himself. And the wife must see to it that
she respects her husband. Marriage involves commitment,
involves sacrifice, involves love, involves the union which
stands above other relationships in this world. And so when people
enter into marriage, they need to be entering into it with eyes
wide open. Marriage is for life. God's law about marriage doesn't
change. But in these verses before us,
we have the challenge, of course, of what happens. On what basis
can the marriage bond be broken? There are three things in the
scriptures, I believe, that allow for marriage to be dissolved. One is death, of course, Romans
7, it's just a simple one, no explanation. If I happen to die
in the next little while, my dear wife is free to marry immediately
whoever she wishes. If anyone says other than that,
they are denying what God says. She is free. The second one is
for fornication. Fornication and adultery may
not be necessarily the same thing. Fornication may just include
all deviant sexual behaviour. Once again, Deuteronomy is a
permission and not a command for believers The answer is always
to forgive and to restore and to rebuild what's been damaged
by our sin and the sins around us. For the sake of the Gospel
and for the sake of our families, forgiveness and restoration should
be the things that lie deepest in the Christian heart. And in
Deuteronomy 24 there is the word abandonment. For abandonment,
It's reiterated in 1 Corinthians 7.15. If there is a relationship where
one party is a believer and the other one is not a believer,
and if the unbeliever departs, let him depart. The brother or
sister is not under bondage in such cases. in the context of
1 Corinthians 7, obviously if there is peace and an unbeliever
is willing to live with a believer, then stay. These are permitted
things, not encouraged things. And they are there again often
for the protection of weak and vulnerable people. And the challenge before us in
these words from the Lord Jesus comes as the disciples go into
the house and the Lord Jesus again is questioned by his disciples. This time the disciples have
serious questions. Serious questions need to be
addressed. Testing questions need to be dealt with as such.
And the Lord Jesus is very bold and direct and straightforward
with the Pharisees and he never enters into debate with them.
He just answers their question, shows them the truth and then
walks away from them. In verse 10, in the house the
disciples began questioning him about this again. And he said
to them, whoever divorces his wife and marries another woman
commits adultery against her. And if she divorces her husband
and marries another man, she is committing adultery. Now the Lord Jesus doesn't give
us all of the teaching of the scriptures at this point. He
just wants to reiterate to his disciples that marriage is sacrosanct
and divorce is something which God hates. On your sheets there you have
those verses from Malachi, the end of the Old Testament. These
people come weeping to God's altar, but He no longer regards
their offering or accepts it with favour. And then they say,
why? For what reason is God treating
us like this? Because the Lord has been a witness
between you and the wife of your youth, against whom you have
dealt treacherously. Though she is your companion
and your wife, by covenant, by promise. But no one, not one has done
so who has a remnant of the Spirit. And what did that one do while
he was seeking godly offspring? Take heed then to your spirit. These are spiritual matters.
Take heed then to your spirit, and let no one deal treacherously
against the wife of your youth. 4, verse 16, I hate divorce, says
the Lord God of Israel. And him who covers his garment
with wrong, says the Lord of hosts. So take heed to your spirit,
But you do not deal treacherously. God hates divorce. And we should be absolutely delighted
that he said those words. Because the Lord Jesus, again
and again, throughout the scriptures we are reminded that He is a
husband to His people. And He challenged His covenant
people. He says, where is your certificate
of divorce? I was a husband to you. The Lord
Jesus deals with His people as a people responsible for their
actions. He continually reminds them that
He was a husband who watched over them and cared for them
and loved them. For your Maker, Isaiah 54, 5,
is your husband. The Lord of hosts is his name.
Your Redeemer is the Holy One of Israel." It's a wonderful
opportunity in the midst of sin for us to declare the Gospel. to declare the Gospel to those
amongst us, to those we meet who have been hurt by divorce
and have been hurt by the legalists that make it harder than the
Lord Jesus does. How do we deal with our brothers
and sisters who've been through these things? They are sinners
like the rest of us. They have sinned as we have sinned.
We must remember what the Lord Jesus says about adultery. There is not an adult in this
room, according to the Lord Jesus' words in Matthew 5.27, who has
not committed adultery. If you look lustfully upon a
woman, you have committed adultery already. Because God's law is
a spiritual law. God's law is a law about the
heart. God's law is good. God's law
is holy and God's law is broken by thoughts as much as by actions. That is not condoning actions.
We must turn away from these things by the grace of God. It's
not condoning adultery or lust. It's just reminding us that God's
standards for acceptance before Him is 100% perfection. 100% holiness, 100% of the time, in
all of your life, no excuse whatsoever. No one else to blame. If you're going to meet God in
glory, you're going to have to have a righteousness which is
perfect righteousness. You're going to have to have
a holiness which is perfect holiness. You either meet God on the basis
of who the Lord Jesus is, or if you meet God on the basis
of your works plus Jesus' works, as Spurgeon said, if there is
one stitch in your robe of righteousness, which is your doing, the whole
robe will fall apart on the Day of Judgment. So how do we deal
with our brothers and sisters who have fallen? Firstly, we
acknowledge that whenever we see sin in others, It's in our
own hearts as well. We're all cut from the same piece
of cloth. Also we need to take people to
the Gospel. The Gospel is about Jesus doing
and not about our doing. And we need again and again to
remind ourselves of verses like Romans 8 verse 1. If you're covered by the blood
of Jesus, There is now, there is now no condemnation to those
who are in Christ Jesus. If there is now no condemnation
from God, woe be to us if we condemn our brothers and sisters. God has dealt with their sins.
If you are in Christ, He has put them on His Son. And the
Lord Jesus owned them as His sins. He said, these are mine. And the holy law of God slew
His Son and punished Him with the sword of justice until God's
holy justice said, enough, it is finished. And the Lord Jesus
is going to, in those words from Ephesians 5, present His bride,
holy, spotless, blameless. He might present to Himself,
verse 27, the church in all her glory. What is her glory? The Lord Jesus is her glory,
having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing that she would
be holy and blameless. This is the gospel, isn't it? We must, as God's children in
this fallen and broken world, say that adultery is wrong. Say that fornication is wrong.
say that the morals of this world are wrong and offensive to God.
And amongst God's people, we know that those things lie in
our hearts. And God's command to his people,
God's command to his preachers is, comfort my people, comfort
my people. We think that we live in times
that are worse than olden days. We talk about the good old days.
There never were any good old days. there never will be any
good old days. In fact, so strong is this prohibition
that the Lord brings to the disciples, and so common was divorce for
the most trivial reason amongst the Jews and the Romans and others,
that when the disciples heard this in Matthew's account, they
say, well it's actually better for us not to marry. Because
if we can't get out of marriage really easily the way we've been
doing it now, it's best to avoid marriage. What a tragic reflection
upon the hearts of men. And now we come to the beautiful
part of this passage and the Holy Spirit has joined these
things together that we might learn a lesson from children.
Daniel you're here to teach us. You're here to teach, Norman
Beth. Sarah, Elizabeth, Angus, Rachel,
you're here to teach us. The Lord Jesus' treatment of
children is beautiful. So some people were bringing
in verse 13, bringing children to him that he might touch them.
But the disciples rebuked them. But when Jesus saw this, he was
indignant and said to them, Permit the children to come to me, do
not hinder them. Listen to this, Daniel. For the
kingdom of God belongs to such as these. And then the Lord Jesus
says truly, Amen. Strong words when the Lord Jesus
is saying these things. I say to you, whoever does not
receive the Kingdom of God like a child will not enter it at
all. It's wonderful that you're here,
Daniel. It's wonderful that you're teaching us lessons. Because
big people need to enter the Kingdom of God like little children. And in verse 15, how do they
get to the Kingdom of God? They don't get there because
they're big and strong and they do special things. They actually
receive the Kingdom of God. It's a gift. It's a gift from
God to receive His Kingdom. The children have so many lessons
to teach us, haven't they? Children know what it is for
other people to be big and strong and for them to be weak. Children
know what it is to be dependent upon others for food, for care,
for protection. Children are willing to learn. There is a sense in which as
much as there is sin in their lives, they are a blank sheet
and they can learn so many things. They just absorb information
and they learn from it. And children, despite the promises
of their folly, are not malicious. It's just amazing, isn't it?
I'm looking at two of my daughters here and the amount that they've
had to forgive me in the last 20 something years is just, you
would not find the books in this town to write it all down on.
It's just remarkable, isn't it? Children do forgive and they
do forget and they are generally not malicious and vindictive. In malice, says Ephesians, be
ye little children, be like children. And children, have a humility. When God says that he created
Adam and Eve, and created Eve from the rib of Adam, to be a
helper suitable, to be a perfect companion that matched him, to
be God's creation for him, children believe it. Wise, incredibly
intelligent adults will try and work out how it happened from
monkeys, or amoeba, or something else. God's children just believe
what God says. They believe His promises. They trust His promises. Everything
in God's Kingdom is the opposite to man's way of thinking. God's children grow in their
humility, they grow in their dependence, they grow in their
acknowledgement and acceptance of who their husband is and how
much he cares for them. We don't grow independent, we
grow dependent. we see more and more of the glory
of our Saviour. And like little children, we
trust what He says about us. When we stumble and fall, when
our brothers and sisters stumble and fall, we remember that He
is their shield. He is their protector. He is
their defender. And that we have a gospel that
we need to proclaim to each other. A gospel that is good news. If Christianity doesn't function
in your life like good news, then you need to hear the good
news. We need to go to the Lord Jesus and be reminded that He
said it's finished. He said, I will take responsibility
for my bride. I'll take responsibility for
her wanderings and her backslidings. I'll take responsibility for
her sins. And I will present her holy,
spotless and blameless. We live in a world full of sin,
that sin that lurks inside of each and every one of us. But
our Lord Jesus has put away our sins. He's put them away perfectly
and completely and forever. And there is now no condemnation,
no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Let's pray.