Let's begin our lesson this morning
by reading through some verses here in Mark chapter 10. I want to read the first 12 verses. If you'd like, you can follow
along. Mark chapter 10, beginning with
verse 1. And he arose from thence, and
cometh into the coast of Judea by the farther side of Jordan. 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 that precept. But from the beginning of the
creation of God, he made them male and female. And he said, 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 no man put asunder. And in the house his disciples
asked him again. Evidently he was outside teaching
as his manner was. And I don't think he was even
on the subject of marriage. He was probably, well no doubt
in my mind, he was preaching to them the gospel. talking to
them about the prophecies of the Old Testament concerning
the coming of Christ and so on. And then these Pharisees came
in and began to ask him about divorce. And then when he went into the
house, his disciples asked him again, verse 10, Mark chapter
10, of the same matter. And he saith unto them, Whosoever
shall put away his wife, and marry another, committeth adultery
against her. And if a woman shall put away
her husband, and be married to another, she committeth adultery. Now the lesson contained in these
several verses is about marriage, and in particular about divorce. I titled the lesson, Marriage
and Christ. I have several things I wanna
point out as we go through these verses, and the first thing is
this. Notice who's doing the teaching.
It says, he came thither, and as he was wont, taught them again. This is Christ doing the teaching. This is the word made flesh. There's no higher authority than
him, no pure revelation than him, He doesn't talk about things
he doesn't know anything about. He talks about things he knows.
He knows. He's the teacher. And I don't
have for you this morning the Catholic confession of faith
concerning marriage. And I don't have and don't even
desire to read the Baptist doctrine about marriage. Nor do I care
for any of the denominational explanations or rules concerning
marriage. What I do have, and I find full
sufficiency in, is the teaching of the Son of God. Do I really
want to know about marriage and divorce? If I do, you're not
gonna find a better source. This is the Son of God himself. And you might doubt my input
on any of the doctrines that I speak, and you can accept or
reject my opinions on the matters, but you better be careful how
you treat these words, because these words are from the Son
of God. Don't take them lightly. And I'm, as I said before, confident
that marriage wasn't what our Lord was teaching when these
Pharisees approached him, they approached him wanting to tempt
him, wanting to shut him up, wanting him to be quiet on the
subject of the Christ. And so they got this straw man
here about marriage and divorce, and they threw it at him, tempting
him. He preached. Christ preached
Christ. That's what he preached. Christ
and Him crucified. And out of this teaching, everything
else finds its foundation, including marriage and divorce. The Apostle Paul said he determined
to know nothing among the Corinthians when he went to them, save Jesus
Christ and Him crucified. That's all he wouldn't This is
where he went. He wasn't straying from it. He
wasn't going sideways from it. He said, I determined to know
nothing among you save Jesus Christ and him crucified. Yet
he taught the Lord's table to the Corinthians. He taught the
Corinthians something about church discipline. He taught them how
to give. He taught them about the ministry,
and he taught them about marriage, but he never swerved from Christ
and Him crucified. All these other things grow out
of that. They all find their foundation
in Christ crucified. So here's the first thing I want
us to consider. Christ is the teacher. And then
secondly, this subject began as a leading question from the
enemies of God and the enemies of his people. These were Pharisees. Now most of you have watched
television court trials and one of them will be up and he's just popping questions and all
of a sudden the other lawyer will stand up and he said, He's
leading the witness. He's leading the witness. And
that's what these Pharisees were doing. They were leading the
witness. They wanted to lead him right
into their little trap that they had set. They asked him questions,
and I'll be honest with you, I go sometimes to worship services
away from here as a guest speaker or whatever, and I have people
after the service sometimes ask me leading questions just like
this. The divisive issue is of the
day. Christ being made sin. Eternal
justification. Something. And they'll start
asking me leading questions. They want to lead me right into
their little trap. And that's what they were doing
with our Lord. They ask Him, it says here in
verse 2, tempting Him. tried to lead him into their
little trap, and they sought to make him appear foolish and
ignorant before the people. That's what they wanted to do.
I'm convinced these Pharisees had no interest in the subject
of marriage. They weren't asking this question
for information. They weren't trying to settle
some troubling issue among them over marriage. These Pharisees
knew what they believed and why, and they could tell you. They
could tell you. And they weren't asking him,
they weren't even interested in the subject of marriage. It
served only as a springboard for their accusations. I don't know if you've ever thought
about it, but I want you to think about it. Religious men and women
who don't know God are not good people confused in their doctrines. They're not good folks confused
in their doctrines. They're enemies of God and they're
enemies of your soul. Our Lord told the Pharisees,
I mean told his disciples who were constantly at that point
trying to defend the Pharisees. Still trying to justify their
confidence in them because they were raised under them. They
were taught to respect them. Well, I'll give you an occasion.
They came to our Lord and they said, do you know that the Pharisees
were offended? Yeah, I know. I know. I know what I said and why I
said it. I know they were offended. Leave them alone. That's what
he told his disciples. Leave them alone. They're blind
leaders of the blind, and if the blind lead the blind, they're
both going to fall in the ditch. Leave them alone. A lot of times we think we've
been along this way for a while, and we think, well, maybe if
I go down there and join myself to that little group, maybe they'll
allow me to teach Sunday school. Maybe I can get in there and
sneak a little medicine in the milk. No, you're the one who's
going to come away with the virus, that antichrist virus. You're
the one who's going to suffer harm. They're not going to be
bettered for it. you're gonna be worsened for it. These are Satan's servants, his
children, that's what he told those. They said, are you saying
we'd be born of fornication? We have one father, even God.
He said, if God was your father, you'd love me. I proceeded forth
and came from God. You're of your father, the devil.
Isn't that what he told them? exactly what he told them. They're
Satan's servants, they're his children, and the lust of their
father they will do. Now here's the question. Is it
lawful for a man to put away his wife? He's married a woman
and she won't obey him. She won't keep the house the
way he expected her to keep it. She's always wanting something
contrary to what he wants. He's married this woman, and
they're not getting along, and he wants a divorce. He wants
a divorce. She didn't live up to his expectations,
and now he wants a divorce. So here it is. Is it lawful for a man to put
away his wife? Well, our Lord could have just
simply said yes or no. He could have. But he didn't. because of why they asked the
question. And he just turns this whole
thing right back around on them and he said, what did Moses say? That's where your hope is in
the law, what did Moses say? What does the law say about this? And they said, well, Moses suffered
to write a bill of divorce and put her away. And as usual, they left out the
reason for the bill, none of them even knew it. Verse five,
and Jesus answered and said unto them, the hardness of your heart. That's why this bill of divorcement
was granted, because of the hardness of your heart. And he wrote you
this precept. Because you're sinners, you're
sinners. Your hard heart, Moses gave you
this bill of divorce. And then our Lord, this is my
fourth point, our Lord turns to them and he tells them the
truth about marriage. If you wanna know the truth about
divorce, you first have to know the truth about marriage. And
so our Lord turns to him in Mark chapter 10 verse six, he said,
but from the beginning of the creation of God, He made them male and female.
And he led this woman to her husband and joined them together. And then he said this, you can
read it back in the book of Genesis. He said this, for this cause
shall a man leave his father and mother and cleave to his
wife. There wasn't even a father and
a mother yet when he said this. And they twain shall be one flesh,
so then they're no more twain, they're not two people, they're
one. Now, if you're one, how you gonna
separate one? You see what he's telling them?
You don't know what Mary did. That's why you want to quibble
and argue about divorce. You don't know what marriage
is. Many of them were married and still didn't know what marriage
was. Some of them may have already sought a bill of divorce, but
I don't know. But here's what our Lord told
them. He said, in the beginning, there was no divorce. There was
the joining of a man and a woman together and they twain shall
be one, one flesh, one body. They're one. And the very first relationship
manifested on earth after God's creation was marriage. Now all these relationships are
given of God and designed of God to teach us something about
our relationship to him. Friends and fathers and mothers
and all of these relationships. But the first relationship was
a relationship of marriage. And it was the first relationship
established because it is a picture or a type of Christ and his church. And this is the reason for creation. God created the world. He took
of that clay and made a man and then took of his rib and made
a woman and then led the woman to the man and joined them together
and they become one. This is a picture of Christ and
his church. This glorious betrothal, this
promised union, that's what prompted creation. This union of Adam
and Eve pictured the union of Christ and his church by which
all the children of God would find their being, and in time,
all the benefits and blessings of God. In Ephesians 5, verse
25, Paul writes, husbands, love your wives even as Christ loved
the church and gave himself for it. In this union of marriage, a
man and a woman are joined together. And our Lord said, they twain
shall be one flesh. So then they're no more twain,
but one. They're one flesh. They cannot
symbolize Christ and his church and be apart from one another. Can you imagine Christ and his
people and they're separate? No way. The very foundation of
our hope is our union with Christ. Cannot symbolize Christ and his
church and be apart from one another. It's only in their union.
Christ is one with his church. And then there's a new obstruction
to marriage today where the bride continues to be called by her
maiden name. Boy, don't you come here after
you get married and tell me that. I'll scold you. I won't scold
you over much, but I'll scold you over that. Can you imagine, as a believer, confessing my oneness to Christ,
but still preferring my relationship to Adam over him? You can't even
imagine such a thing. Well, that's what it is in this
picture of Christ and his church and marriage. If we enter into
marriage, but we won't want to take our husband's name, we still want to identify with
our original father. That's religion. Exactly what
that is. This is born out of false religion
and this individualism that they try to mix into their union with
Christ. It all flows from men and women's
ignorance of the believer's union with Christ. That's why this
whole thing of marriage has been blown so far out. They have same-sex
marriage in our day. I can't even fathom such a thing. And I'll tell you something else
about this union. It's not brought to pass in ignorance. Ask somebody what they believe.
I don't know, I just believe. Then you don't believe. You don't
believe. This thing of faith, when man's
born again and God gives him that gift of faith, that whole
thing is a joining together of Christ and His church. This union
is becoming complete now. And he gives us of his spirit.
He takes up residence. We've always been one with him,
but now he lets you in on it. He lets you in on it. And he
don't do it in ignorance. He tells you exactly what you
are. You think when Boaz married Ruth, that Ruth hid something
from Boaz? Boaz knew everything there was
to know about her. And she knew everything she needed
to know about Boaz. They went into that marriage
with their eyes wide open. If we come to him, we come with
our eyes wide open. We hear the truth about ourselves
and the truth about him. And I'm gonna say this, I'm not
gonna say that men don't do this, some of them do, but women in
particular, young women, get in so much trouble thinking that
they can change this man that they're about to marry somewhere
down the road. I'm gonna change him. No you
ain't. No you ain't. He gonna be the
same man you married. Same man you married. Don't hide
things from one another. Be honest with one another. Go
into marriage with your eyes wide open and know this. It's a picture of the believer's
relationship to Christ and then treat it that way. Treat it that
way. Let that be the motivational
force behind our behavior in marriage. Well, Preacher, what about those
who have already been divorced? Already experienced separation?
Treat them the same way you treat every other sinner that's come
to Christ. What's past is past. Leave it in the past. We don't live in the past. We
live today. Today, if you hear His voice,
isn't that what He says? Harden not your heart. Now we got quite a few young
men and women who are at that age where marriage is, they're
beginning to contemplate marriage. And to you, I'm going to give
three things by way of instruction. First of all, if you marry, marry
in the Lord. If you're a believer, if you
believe what I'm preaching, teaching to this congregation, if you're
a believer, don't marry outside the Lord. You can date somebody outside
the Lord and bring them in here. Hopefully the Lord will allow
them to hear. Maybe he will. Maybe he'll allow
them to see. But if they don't, don't you
marry outside the Lord. Brother Mahan, was talking to,
we were kinda in the early 20s, his Sunday school class, went
from about 18 to 26 or 27, something like that. Anyway, he came up
to this subject one Sunday, and here's what he said. He said,
if a child of God marries a child of the devil, you're gonna have
trouble with your father-in-law. Either direction. Either direction. Christ's not gonna play second
fiddle in your life and as one becomes more and more prominent,
if Christ becomes, and He will if you're a believer, He'll become
more and more prominent in your life, then your wife or your
husband's gonna become more and more jealous over this prominence
of Christ. He's beginning to take you away
from her or him, and you're spending time over here. And they become
jealous. So to be one with your bride,
make sure you both have the same interest in the gospel. Secondly,
when you marry, first of all, when you marry Mary and the Lord, and you might say, well, there's
nobody here. There's nobody here that I have
an interest in. There's nobody here in my age.
Then cancel your next fishing trip and go up and visit one
of these churches where there is. Isaac didn't find his bride where
he lived, did he? Uh-uh. No, his father's servant sent
over to another place to find his bride and brought her back. Kelsey didn't find a bride here.
Found a husband in New Jersey. But he's a believer. Yeah, went to the Danville Conference.
That's right. So you can't find one here. This is not the only church.
Find one that has somebody your age and go up there and visit.
Go up there and visit. Who knows what the Lord may do. And then secondly, when you do
marry, and you will eventually, do not expect too much from your
spouse. Marriage is a joining of one
sinner to another sinner. Don't forget that. Don't forget
that. I'll tell you, if you want to
know just how much of a sinner you are, read the book of Hosea.
He commanded his prophet to go marry a harlot. He said, a harlot? A harlot.
You're going to marry her. You love her. You love her as
your wife, and he did. But he said, this is the whole
house of Israel. This is picturing the whole house
of Israel. They're sinners. They're sinners. Marriage is the union of one
sinner to another, and sinners need constant forgiveness, constant
attention, and constant consideration. Don't run to a lawyer every time
she loses her temper or you lose yours, that you don't need to
run to a lawyer. Need to learn how to forgive.
Be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another even as
God, for Christ's sake, has forgiven you. I know people who've made pets
out of wild animals, and then when they got bit, they were
surprised. One of them had a coon and he was sticking his finger
through there and he's playing with that coon. That coon got
aggravated after a while and chomped down on the fingers.
He said, I raised him from a baby. Yeah, but he's a coon. He ain't
a poodle. People raise snakes and they
get bit. Huh? One sinner marries another and
then he gets upset because their nature comes out. You see what I'm saying? Don't
be surprised. And then my third advice to you
is to seek above all else your spouse's spiritual good. Don't be afraid Have a reading
in the morning, a devotional. Sit and read several verses of
scripture. If you don't feel like commenting
on those verses to her, find a, there's all kinds of morning
and evening devotionals that you can read, and good writers,
Don's got one, several people. Have them, they're devotionals.
You can read a certain amount of passages in there and he'll
give you some comments on it and you can have a morning and
evening devotional. Bring her to worship. Take part
together in church activities. And educate yourself by listening
to good gospel preaching and then apply that teaching in your
home. You're the priest of your home, did you know that? The
man is the priest of his home. And you have that responsibility. And then I want to close with
the Lord's final word on this subject. These were believers.
These were his disciples. And everybody else went away. They heard what he had to say.
Some of them were interested. Some of them wasn't. They went
away. And then they went into the house
for the evening. Teaching was over. And the disciples
came to him and they said, Lord, tell us what you said. We're not really sure what you
said. Here's what he said. Be it man or woman, if they divorce
and marry another, except for fornication or abandonment. In the book of Corinthians, he
uses abandonment as a reason. If she won't stay with you, let
her go. Let her go. She don't want any
part of this gospel. She don't want any part of this
walk. She's not gonna stay at peace. She's not gonna keep your
home. She's just gonna, there's no
reconciliation. And that's not the case in every
case. And he states that. He said, if she'll stay, then
let her stay. The Lord may use that relationship.
He may use your love for her and her love for you. He may
use that to sanctify her and change her and show her the truth. So if she'll stay, let her stay.
But if she won't stay, if she's going to abandon you and be no
reconciliation, let her go. Let her go. and then the other
being fornication. And both of these can be forgiven
and should be if asked. But if not, a divorce is permitted. Otherwise, divorce and remarriage
is nothing more than fornication and adultery. That's the Lord's
word on this thing. But when we enter into these
relationships, I'm telling you, if I do the marrying, I'm gonna
be sure that you know that these things that you're saying are
in the sight of God. You're saying these things before
him, not just me and whoever gathered here. These are witnesses,
but you're taking these oaths, you're taking these pledges before
God. And I'm gonna tell you something, he'll hold you to them. He'll
hold you to them. All right, thank you.