So that's Mark chapter 10 and
we'll read from verse 1. So we're speaking about the Lord
Jesus Christ and he is again travelling with his disciples. And he rose from Thens and cometh
into the coasts of Judea by the farther side of Jordan. And the
people resort unto him again. And as he was wont, he taught
them again. And the Pharisees came to him
and asked him, Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife, tempting
him? And he answered and said unto
them, What did Moses command you? And they said, Moses suffered
to write a bill of divorcement and to put her away. And Jesus
answered and said unto them, for the hardness of your heart
he wrote you this precept. But from the beginning of the
creation, God made them male and female. For this cause shall
a man leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife. and they
twain shall be one flesh, so then they are no more twain,
but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined
together, let not man put asunder. And in the house his disciples
asked him again of the same matter. And he saith unto them, Whosoever
shall put away his wife and marry another, commiteth adultery against
her. And if a woman shall put away
her husband and be married to another, she committeth adultery. Amen. May the Lord bless to us
this reading from his word. We have mentioned in the past
how active the Lord has been in travelling around and ministering
to the crowds who gathered to hear him, healing the sick and
we've noticed tutoring his disciples. The Lord always had this place
for making sure that his disciples were being taught by his words,
by his example, through his parables and his miracles. And of course,
these were not days of cars or planes. If you went anywhere,
you walked. And the Lord was often on the
move. and I've no doubt that that in
itself was a lesson for the disciples as well. They were being taught
about managing their time. They were being taught about
being diligent and thorough when it came time for their ministry
and for them to carry the gospel to the ends of the earth. And I think that's a good lesson
for all of us. It's so easy to be distracted
by the things of this life and the things of this world. But
let us remember, like old Jacob, priorities. Let us remember to
give place to the things of God. Seek ye first the kingdom of
God and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added
unto you. The Lord said, the fields are
white already to harvest. There's a work to be done in
the service of our God. And it's also perhaps an occasion
just to remind ourselves of the faithful labourers that have
gone before us and gifted us the inheritance that we have
today, whether it's their labours in preaching or in writing or
in travelling to bring the Gospel to where we were, that we might
hear it preached. These are blessings that the
Lord lays and commits to his people to carry out and to enact
as he did his disciples, so he has done through the history
of the church. We read a little verse a few
months ago in our journey, our travels through the Psalms, It
was back in Psalm 48, verse 12. Let me read it to you again.
It's a lovely little verse, and I think it just impinges upon
the thought that we're having here in this point. It says there, walk about Zion,
walk about Zion, and go around about her. Tell the towers thereof
Mark ye well her bulwarks, consider her policies, that ye may be
able to tell it to the generation following." Zion, of course,
is a picture of the Church of Jesus Christ, and as we are able
to see what the Lord has done in the Church of Jesus Christ,
so we have a message to tell to the generation following.
And here's another quick observation just as we pass through these
introductory comments to what we have before us today. These
Pharisees displayed not only a personal hostility to the Lord
Jesus Christ, but they also displayed a careless disregard for those
needy people around them whom the Lord was helping. These people
had come out to hear the Lord's ministry. And as the Lord Jesus
healed them, Matthew tells us that he healed them, and Mark
tells us that he taught them, these Pharisees thought nothing
of interposing themselves between the sick, needy sinners and the
great physician who was able to help them. That's a lesson
there, I think. The lesson is how often religion
gets in the way of the gospel. Woe betide those whose legalism,
whose religion, gets between the Lord and his needy people. It's grace not duty that sinners
need to hear about and only the gospel of free sovereign grace
will do our souls good. What a lovely thing for Mark
to write that the people resorted unto him again. The people came
to hear the Lord Jesus Christ speak again. Maybe they'd heard
him before, maybe the Lord had passed through that area before
and now they knew that they were having another opportunity to
hear the gospel. When sinners know the gospel,
nothing else will satisfy their hungry souls. And so the people
resorted to him again. And as I was thinking about that,
these Pharisees, their rudeness, their disregard for the people
and the hostility towards the Lord, I thought how impudent
and disrespectful they were to come and tempt and try the Son
of God in this way. And then I thought how that every
day and every moment of every day we ourselves evidence our
lack of respect for the Holy Lord God. God's people, Christ's
church, the elect, the chosen people of God, we receive mercy
despite our insults against God in the things that we say and
do and think And if, for the sake of the elect, the rune of
the reprobate is stayed for a little while, make no mistake, for the
rudeness and the impudence that man enacts in shaking his fist
in the face of a holy God, God will not be mocked. The question
that the Pharisees asked was a question about divorce. That was the pretext for the
Pharisees challenging the Lord. I've no doubt that they sat in
their little huddles and tried to work out the best questions
that they could ask to get the Lord Jesus Christ into trouble
with the crowds and with the people that were there. The Saviour
had spoken about divorce previously in the Sermon on the Mount and
he had spoken against the abusive practice of husbands putting
away wives and of the sinful consequences that flowed from
that putting away. divorce and the grounds for giving
what was called bills of divorcement or a piece of paper that said
I no longer want you to be my wife was the subject of the Pharisees'
question and that was what they confronted the Lord with. It
was a contentious issue amongst the Jews at that time and previously. And doubtless, these Pharisees
felt that this was a way of entrapping the Lord Jesus so that he would
have to declare on one side of the question or another in this
ongoing debate that filled the minds of these legal moralists. But the Lord, was smarter than
they were, and he beautifully sidesteps their question and
turns their subtlety against them to their own confusion. The question was not, says the
Lord, what are the grounds for divorce, but if there should
be putting away at all Had not the Holy Spirit said by the prophet,
God hateth putting away? That divorce was indeed permitted
by Moses was only the result of fallen man's wickedness and
the hardness of our hearts. And this is a scripture principle. Marriage, the Apostle Paul tells
us, is a picture of Christ and his church, and it has been since
its institution in the Garden of Eden. Let me say that another
way. All the beautiful things in marriage,
all the highest ideals, in this life's most intimate relationship. Things like love and gentleness
and loyalty and purity and passion and fruitfulness. Things like
security and kindness and comfort and intimacy and honesty and
forgiveness. find their highest fulfilment
in the Lord Jesus Christ and in the relationship that Christ
has with his church, with his people, that is pictured as a
marriage. Putting away or divorce has no
place in that list of qualities. It is opposed to the picture
of marriage and Christ's relationship with his people. And if this
putting away finds a place at all within the symbol, it's only because man in his
sin has interfered and spoiled the symbol and ruined the pattern
the picture that the Lord God gave us. Indeed, I have no doubt
that sin and Satan have always been active to destroy the pattern
of marriage, so as to deface and to conceal the picture of
the glorious union that marriage signifies between Christ and
his people. all the attacks that we see on
marriage whether it's down through the years or whether it's in
these so-called enlightened liberal days are designed to hide God's
will and God's purpose in that covenant of grace that we've
been speaking about. When God gave Eve to Adam as
a help meat. It was a picture of Christ and
his church. When Adam called Eve bone of
his bone and flesh of his flesh, it was a picture of Christ and
his church. Christ literally became bone
of our bone and flesh of our flesh to be the anti-type of
that picture. The picture was given because
Christ and his relationship with his church was the reality. We
are members of Christ's body and he is our head. We are one flesh with the Lord
Jesus Christ. And sometimes we hear people
discussing divorce and remarriage in churches, perhaps, and talking
about the exception clause. by which they mean that there's
no divorce except it be for fornication, quoting the Lord's words in Matthew
19, verse nine. As though being able to prove
adultery legitimizes divorce. We need to be careful that we're
not falling into the very trap that the Pharisees had with their
ideas. There are no good divorces. God hates putting away, and all
divorce, regardless of the guilty party, is due ultimately, as
the Lord tells us here, to the hardness of man's heart. And we can only praise our God
that regardless of the shortcomings in the tight There is no failure
in the anti-type. There is no putting away between
the bride and the bridegroom. There is no severing between
the head and the body. There's no divorce between Christ
and his church. Now I'm not saying that there
are no grounds for divorce or that divorce should never occur. There are times when it is a
necessity, but I am saying that that is not how it was from the
beginning. And where and when divorce does
occur in our fallen world, it does so because of sin and because
of the hardness of man's heart. Believers are still sinners in
this fallen world and our actions have consequences and the things
that we do and the things that we say have consequences both
for our own spiritual well-being and that of those that are closest
to us. Whatever mistakes we have made
in our lives and in our relationships and in our families Because God hates putting away,
therefore we have hope in Him. Whatever mistakes we've made,
and we've made mistakes, because of the Gospel, we have
hope that those mistakes can be rectified, can be dealt with. can be forgiven, can be blotted
out. So let us, in the remainder of
the time that we have today, lift our eyes from the consequences
and the damage of sin in the type to see the beauty of holiness
in Christ's dealings with his bride. Our Lord Jesus Christ,
our blessed, precious saviour loves his bride. Loves his bride with an unchanging
and an unchangeable love. He is kind. He is gentle. He is forgiving. He personifies
and emulates all of those high values that we thought about
in this picture of marriage. Friends, it's you and me, it's
us who are the guilty party in this relationship. It is our
eye that wandered. It's our step that turned. It
was our lust that burned for another. It is us who in the
hardness of our heart have dealt deceitfully with our husband
and been unfaithful to our Lord. We've followed fleshy passions. We've pursued all manner of spiritual
adulteries and fornication to the heart of our souls. And so
thereby have ended up abandoned and despised and naked and alone. and we have given our husband
every reason to divorce us, every justification to write a bill
of divorcement and put us away. We have no grounds to complain
should Christ leave us in our sin and go and find another wife. But it won't happen because there
is redemption in Jesus Christ. And after all the treacherous
departures of Jesus' people, all our wanderings in this world,
our Saviour will nevertheless bring his church, bring his people,
his bride, home to his Father's house. How can that be? How is it possible that something
so vile and wicked and sordid like me can be found in a place
that is so holy and perfect and pure as heaven and the presence
of the Holy Lord God. Well, I repeat myself. It is
because our Lord Jesus Christ, our blessed, precious husband,
loves his bride with an unchanging and an unchangeable love. It
is because he is kind and gentle and forgiving. It is because
he has made a way of reconciliation. It is because he has interposed
himself. He has defended us. He has stood
in our place. He has carried our burden. He
has borne the punishment and the weight of our sin. He's bared
his back to the rod of God's wrath. and he has suffered under
the condemnation of our wickedness. This is our saviour. This is
our Christ. This is our bridegroom. This
is our husband. And he loves us. The Bible does
not mellow its language in describing our infidelity. We're filthy and bloodied but
our Lord Jesus Christ has washed and cleansed us and made us whole. We're naked, but he has covered
our shame with righteousness not our own, with the very righteousness
of God himself. He is the Lord, our righteousness,
and he has covered us with himself. He has embraced us. We are cold and lonely and abandoned
and he has drawn us to himself. We are helpless, we are guilty,
we are unworthy and he has taken all of that away, carried it
all away. Why would the Lord do such a
thing? Why does the Lord Jesus Christ
love us so? because he loves us. Not because
we're special, not because we're great, not because we're good,
not because we've done anything worthy, not because we chose
him, not because we've run after him, not because we've believed,
not because we've performed our duties, not because we're better
than anyone else, but because he loves us with an everlasting
love. Because he loves us with an unchanging
love and an unchangeable love. Because he loves us without reservation
and without condition. He is kind. He is gentle. He is forgiving. Paul says the
Lord Jesus Christ has done all this that he might present us. His church those people who have
faith in him, that he might present it to himself, a glorious church,
not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that we should
be holy and without blemish. What a privilege we have. How
blessed we are to have such a saviour who loves us and gave himself
for us. and who will never put us away. May the Lord bless these thoughts
to us today. Amen.