I want to read the first five
verses if you'd like to turn there. Deuteronomy chapter 24.
244, Barb, isn't that on that? Deuteronomy chapter 24. It's
on page 244 in your, if that's the book you've got. I don't
know if you've got that. Okay. Verse 1. When a man hath taken
a wife, and married her, and it come to pass that she find
no favor in his eyes, because he hath found some uncleanness
in her, then let him write her a bill of divorcement, and give
it in her hand, and send her out of his house. And when she
is departed out of his house, she may go and be another man's
wife. And if the latter husband hate
her, and write her a bill of divorcement, and give it in her
hands, and send her out of his house, if the latter husband
die, which took her to be his wife, her former husband, which
sent her away, may not take her again to be his wife, after that
she is defiled, for that is abomination before the Lord. and thou shalt
not cause the land to sin which the Lord thy God giveth thee
for an inheritance. When a man hath taken a new wife,
he shall not go out to war, neither shall he be charged with any
business, but he shall be free at home one year, and shall cheer
up his wife which he hath taken." Now this is concerning divorce
as I read there to you. I imagine all of us that's come
here this evening will acknowledge that divorce is an awful thing. It's so rampant in our society,
but if you've been involved in that or know some family members
that's been involved in that, probably you can witness firsthand
what an awful thing divorce is. And it's wrong. We'll just have
to admit that when we divorce is wrong, and it's wrong because
It's caused. We know that it's a... And I
could say this, I think, and probably all of you would agree
with me, that divorce is caused by a moral issue. There's always
a moral issue involved in divorce. I don't know what it would be.
I can imagine. I can see in myself what would
cause me to divorce. It would be selfishness, carelessness,
infidelity, unfaithfulness, but whatever and whenever a couple
that's taken each other for man and wife, husband and wife, and
promised before God to dwell together as man and wife until
death part us and then break those vows, break those promises,
it's got to be a moral issue, isn't it? If nothing else, just
breaking those promises show us that it's a moral issue that's
involved. When we consider something else
about divorce, when there's children, when there's children involved,
there's always a negative aspect, almost always. There are some
children, and we've seen this in our own family, my wife and
I have, where some children are absolutely devastated. Parents
very seldom consider this, but some children are devastated
and some children start on a downhill slide and they never recover. It affects them the rest of their
life and even sometime into the grandchildren that they have.
It becomes a generational thing. So the moral thing that's involved
in divorce, the children that's involved in divorce, and also
the financial aspect of divorce. You see divorced people sometimes,
a lot of times, and either the husband or the wife or sometimes
both of them are having financial problems. And one of the great
financial burdens on our country now, they tell us, is caused
by divorce. It's because the government has
had to step in with welfare, take care of the mom and take
care of the children and so on. So one of the great burdens now
that we're suffering in our country financially is this welfare system
loading down, trying to take care of divorced families. Our
founding fathers made a statement that I thought was very impressive
and very telling. had to be four things present
for people to govern themselves. Four conditions before a government,
the constitution that they envisioned would work. They said a constitution
won't work in just every population, in every society. There has to
be four things present in the general population. One was honesty. There has to be a general integrity
throughout the population. If you have an overwhelming number
of the population turned to dishonesty and a lack of integrity, they
said people couldn't govern themselves. The second one was they called
it religiosity is the word they used for it. It meant a true
consciousness. and acknowledgment of God to
the point that it affected people in their daily life. They said
without that, society could not govern itself. The second one
they gave was industrialism. That was a good work ethic. People
had to have a work ethic. Thomas Jefferson made a statement.
I may not be able to quote it exactly, but I have a little
book of some of his quotations. And he said when the have-nots
are more in number than the haves. And the have-nots vote politicians
into office that will take from the haves and give it to the
have-nots. He said your nation falls. There has to be a work
ethic. But you know what the number
one thing had to be in society? And that's integrity in marriage. Integrity in marriage. They said
if the family broke down through divorce, that this type of government
that they envisioned would not work, a government of self-government. So our founding fathers were
very smart, weren't they? But they not only were smart,
they were historians. They knew about the rise of empires,
and they knew the cause of the empire's fall. And one of the
main reasons was divorce, and that's what we're looking at
this evening in our text. In our text Moses deals with
this business of divorce among the children of Israel. Now I
was studying this and looked at this and I thought now this
is very strange. Here you've got a nation, the
Israelites came out of the land of bondage and they're trying
to get into the land of promise and they're in this wilderness
and of all things they have to be dealt with about is divorce.
Isn't that amazing? That's amazing, and I imagine
out in the wilderness they were having trouble with this. But
isn't that very telling on what men are now? Wherever you find
the sons of fallen Adam, you find issues like this, don't
you? And you get a bunch of people, you get a little flock like we
are gathered here tonight, and I bet you if we stayed together
long enough, some trouble would rise, because the trouble's within
us, isn't it? It's within us. So Moses had
to deal with this, problem here about divorce. And he gives here
in verse 1 the condition of a man divorcing his wife. And the only
condition he gives here was that if he finds some uncleanness
in her. We don't know exactly what that
was. We know it wasn't adultery. Because
if it had been adultery, he didn't put her away. They stoned her
to death. We don't know what the uncleanness was here, but
we read about it in Jewish history, and boy, it spread out just to
cover just about everything. Listen to some of these things.
John Gill, he was sort of a historian. He was reading after this one
historian, and he talked about some of the things that this
began to entail. when a man wanted a divorce,
it come right down to his wife having bad breath or Bernie's
meals. It was probably meant here maybe
for if a woman was ceremonial unclean, if she had a bleeding
issue that couldn't be stopped or whatever, but later on it
spread out to cover every little thing if men wanted a divorce. But Moses said here that the uncleanness, not a bad attitude
from the wife, not a bad breath that burned his food, but some
kind of uncleanness. Either two or three times the
Lord Jesus dealt with this verse of Scripture right here that
you and I are looking at. And I want us to turn over there
at these two or three places and see what we can learn quickly
from that. Just in passing, I want you to
look in Matthew Chapter 5 in verse 31. Here is the first
place he dealt with it. Matthew Chapter 5 in verse 31. I love it when we turn to the
New Testament and find where the apostles, but especially
the Lord Jesus deals with the passage in the Old Testament.
But look here how he deals with it in Matthew Chapter 5 in verse
31. It hath been said, Whosoever
shall put away his wife, let him give her a written, a certificate
of divorcement. But I say unto you that whosoever
shall put away his wife, saving for the cause of fornication,
adultery against him, causes her to commit adultery. If she
goes off and marries someone else, he is the cause of it.
and whosoever shall marry her that is divorced committeth adultery."
Now the Lord deals with two things here in this. A false interpretation. That was a false interpretation
of what Moses said. It has been said to you, whosoever
shall put away his wife, let him give her a written divorcement.
That's what it said, but he seems like here he's saying, I'm going
to negate what Moses said. I'm going to speak contrary to
him. I think what he was doing was this. He was standing against
the false interpretation of what Moses said. Moses said if you
see some uncleanness enter, and now they were divorcing for every
reason that could be imagined. But what the Lord does secondly
here, He is restoring marriage to its original intention. One man, one woman. One husband and one wife. Now
this is the first time He dealt with that. Let's turn over a
little bit more in detail in Matthew 19. Here He deals with
it again and look how He deals with it here in Matthew chapter
19 and look in verse 3. Matthew chapter 19 and verse
3. The Pharisees also came unto
Him, tempting Him, testing Him, saying unto Him, Is it lawful
for a man to put away his wife for every cause? Now, you've
got to realize here what was the issue of their day concerning
divorce. There were two great theologians. Two schools of thought in this
day. One of the theologians was, I can't pronounce either one
of them's name, H-I-L-L-E-L, Hillel. He was a theologian of
this day that said you could divorce your wife for any cause.
Just any cause. If you saw another woman you
wanted, divorce your wife. Give her a written divorce and
divorce. There was another school of thought from a man by the
name of Shimea. And he said the only reason you
could divorce your wife was because of adultery. Or a woman divorce
her husband was because of adultery. These Pharisees were testing
the Lord Jesus to see which school He fell into. They knew if they
could catch Him in His words, they could turn either one of
these men and his followers against Him or the other one. Or later
on we'll see here, they wanted Him to contradict Moses. And
that's why they ask him this question. And the Lord's answer
here in verse 4 through verse 6, now here's the way He answers
that question. Is it lawful for a man to put
away his wife for any cause? 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
unto his wife and they too shall be one flesh. Wherefore they
are no more two, but one flesh, what therefore God hath joined
together, let not man put asunder." Now the Lord answers them here
and look how He answers them. He answers them by restoring
the original intention for marriage. Here is what God intended for
a husband and his wife. They were to be one flesh. Remember
when Adam, the Lord put him to sleep, took this rib and made
a woman and brought Eve to Adam? Remember what he said? This is
now bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh. And they too were
one. And that's why marriage, the
union between the husband and the wife is so symbolic, such
a beautiful picture of Jesus Christ and His Church. Because
they're one. You can't separate them. We are
bone of His bone and flesh of His flesh. We're one with the
Lord Jesus Christ. And that's God's intention all
along for that to be symbolic of Christ's union with His Church. Now, these Pharisees here in
verse 7, they think, Boy, we've got it now. I can just see a
smile on their face. So many times they thought they
had our Lord tangled up in his language. But every time he put
them to shame. And look here what they asked
him. Now here's what they asked him. They say unto him, Why did
Moses then command us to give a written writing of divorcement
and to put her away? Boy, they've got him now, haven't
they? They said, Moses said we could put her away for uncleanness. And many of them said we can
put her away for any cause. And now you say that God never
intended that? You're saying now we're not allowed
to do that? Moses said it was alright to
do that. How's He going to answer that? Here's what He said in verse
8. Moses, because of the hardness of your hearts, suffered you
to put away your wives, but from the beginning it was Not so. Boy, that's a good way to answer,
isn't it? Look how he turned the tables on them. Why did Moses
suffer your forefathers to put away their wives? And why are
you fellas, some of you, putting away your wives, he said? For
this reason, because of the hardness of your heart. And I love what
he says here. Moses didn't so much command
them, he suffered them. He suffered them to put away
their wives. I imagine some of these Jewish
husbands were so cruel that if Moses hadn't given them permission
to put away their wives on certain conditions, they'd have accused
them of adultery and had them stoned to put them away. Now
you say, Bruce, surely they wouldn't do that. I'll tell you what they
did to a man by the name of Naboth. They accused him of blaspheming
God and stoned him to death so Jezebel could get his vineyard.
Didn't they do that? Didn't they accuse the Lord Jesus
Christ of blasphemy? Have we not heard Him speak blasphemy? He's worthy of death. Oh, these
Jews especially. When Stephen said, You stiff-necked
and uncircumcised in heart and ears, you do always resist the
Holy Ghost. He knew the kind of hard-hearted
men these were. It had to be regulated. There are two things, I think,
in the Scripture. One is divorce and another is slavery. And God,
knowing the hearts of fallen men out of His long-suffering,
out of His goodness, regulated these two things, divorce and
slavery. Look at slavery, how long it
was in the world. And it was tolerated in the New
Testament. But it was regulated. Remember
what Paul told the masters, you masters? Give unto your slaves
that which is just and don't falsely accuse them. All this stuff that took place
in the southern part of our country Those guys beating their slaves,
raping their slaves, all that, that wasn't permitted of God.
In the Old or New Testament, stuff like that wasn't permitted.
I guess they thought because God had regulated slavery in
the New Testament and suffered them to own their slaves under
certain circumstances, they could just start treating them any
way they wanted to. That's the way the Jews felt about marriage.
Well, if there are certain conditions, like uncleanness, that we got
permission to put them away, they just finally start putting
them away for any cause. I tell you, you can't regulate
sinful mankind. He's always finding himself a
loophole to get in there somewhere, just like these fellows did with
their wives. If Moses hadn't have given them permission, on
certain conditions and very strict conditions to put away their
wives, I just know in my heart that they would have charged
their women with adultery and had them stoned to death. This
was mainly probably to protect those poor innocent wives. The hardness of your hearts. Look back over here now and look
in 1 Corinthians 6. I wanted to say something about
this because I had experience of this with one of our neighbors
down in Tennessee. 1 Corinthians 6. I don't know of anybody that's
not guilty of adultery. And if we're not guilty of it
physically, and thank God for it, what man or what woman can
raise their hand and say, all of my life I've never been guilty
of it in my heart? And that's where it comes from,
isn't it? And whether it's done physically or whether it's done
in the heart, aren't you glad that there's something that frees
us from the guilt and the condemnation and the damnation of divorce? and drunkenness and lying and
every other sin that one can imagine. And what is that? The sacrifice of the Lord Jesus
Christ. Look here in I Corinthians chapter
6 and verse 9. I Corinthians chapter 6 and verse
9. Know you not that the unrighteous
shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived, neither
fornicators, nor adulterers are effeminate, some tell us
that's homosexual tendencies, nor abusers of themselves with
mankind, nor thieves, nor covetousness, nor drunkards, nor revilers,
nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God. One man said,
I bet you one of these sins are going to get you. I bet you all
of them get us. God does not see as we see, does
He? He sees the heart. And there is enough sin in the
unregenerate fallen heart to damn every one of us. That is
sad but true, isn't it? Out of the heart proceed evil
thoughts, adulteries, idolatries, blasphemies, drunkenness. But
look here what He says in verse 11, And such were some of you,
look at this, but ye are watched. You are washed. You are sanctified. You are justified in the name
of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God. That's what they used to be.
And there's so much merit in the Son of God, our Savior, that
He saved them from that. Not only from the guilt of it,
thank God for that, but from the dominion of it. I don't know
about you, but when I was lost, I was under the dominion of sins
and habits that I knew about and couldn't quit it until the
Lord washed me. One time we were, my dad was
telling me, the reason he was telling me about this man, I
knew this man, he was older than, he was old enough to be my dad,
but I went to school with his kids. I had several kids. And my dad told me one day, he
said, This fellow over here, you go to school with his kids,
said one time he made a profession during a revival. He made a profession
of the Lord and said they had a baptism. Had a couple of weeks
revival and after that they had a baptism. They used to do a
lot of that down home. And he said this fellow came
down to be baptized. His name was Oz. Oz Human was
his name. And he said Oz came down there
to be baptized and He went there to the edge of the water and
this evangelist and pastor come out and said, Oz, have you been
married before? He had several kids at this time
now. And he said, yeah. He said, I
had a wife. I had a wife. And they said,
we can't baptize you. And he said, why not? And they
said, well, you've got a wife. And he said, what am I supposed
to do about that? They said, you've got to leave
this woman and go back and find that wife. And he said, listen,
I got to leave my wife and my children and go find a woman
that ran off with another man? Now brothers and sisters, that's
utter ignorance. That pastor and that evangelist
should go sit down and be made to read their Bible over and
over and over until they get some light on this. If any man
be in Christ, he is a new creature. Old things have passed away.
His sins are gone. He's cleansed. He's washed. And
you don't dare hold anything against that man. He's free from
those past sins. I'm telling you, there's things
you can't go back and undo. You get yourself and a bunch
of other people in a mess if you start trying it. When the
Lord Jesus saved that woman in John 8 that was taken in adultery,
remember what He said to her? Woman, where are your accusers?
None accuse you, none, Lord, neither do I condemn thee. I'm
forgiving you of all your sins. Go and sin no more. Don't go
back to that bed. Don't go back to that manner
of life. But He didn't hold it against her, did He? I've often
wondered If this was so, what those two silly men were trying
to tell that man, you have to go back and find your first wife
you're married to after the Lord saves you. I wonder why the Lord
didn't tell that Samaritan woman that. She had five husbands. I wonder why she did. If He meant
to teach us that you have to leave the one you're with now
and go back and find your first one, it would have been a good
place for Him to have taught us that, wouldn't it? But He
didn't. He didn't do no such thing. When
the Lord saves somebody, that past is gone. You were this,
but now you're washed. Now you're sanctified. And now
you're justified. And don't you bless the Lord
for that? I bless the Lord for that. I want you to see something else
here. And I'll read it to you. He said in Matthew chapter 19
and verse 8, the last portion of verse 8, he said this, but
from the beginning it was not so to be. From the beginning
it was not meant for a man to put away his wife or a woman
to put away her husband. Now when is that beginning? I
want you to look at this. Look over here, Mark. This is
the other place. Maybe a parallel passage. Mark
10. This may be a parallel passage to Matthew 19. But it's somewhat different.
Mark chapter 10, look at this. Mark chapter 10, verses 5 and
6. The Pharisees came here, verses 1, 2, 3, tempting Him. And the
Lord Jesus asked them here, what did Moses command you about putting
away your wife? And look in verse 4, Mark chapter
10. And they said, Moses suffered to write a bill of divorcement
and to put her away. And Jesus said unto them, For
the hardness of your heart He wrote you this precept. But look
at this, But from the beginning of the creation God made them
male and female. And then He goes ahead to say,
Shall a man leave his father and his mother? Now, when were
Adam and Eve made? The beginning of the creation.
The beginning of the creation. On the sixth day God created
man, created Adam and then he made Eve, the sixth day of creation.
Now if you follow Adam's lineage, you go all the way up through
Enoch, you go on up through to Noah, after the flood you go
into Abraham and through into David, David all the way to Christ. There has been 2,000 years since
Christ came. So we can trace time. from right
now all the way back to the creation of Adam and Eve. We got the genealogies
to do that. The Bible has it. And if we do
that, how many years ago has that been? About 6,000 years,
isn't it? So how old is creation? In the beginning of creation,
God made them male and female. Well, how old is male and female?
6,000 years old. How old is creation? 6,000 years. Is it not? I love it when
the Lord gives us these little nuggets in here to open up our
minds to these things. The next time somebody tells
me that this world, this universe that we see and live in is somewhere
around 300 million years, give or take a few hundred million,
I'm going to show them this verse right here. In the beginning
of creation, And we know how old Adam and Eve was if we trace
them from our day all the way back. This is a young world we
live in, a very young world. I don't know if there's been
some worlds before this or not. God's a creator. Maybe there
well was. There may be some after this
one. Maybe some outside of this one. I don't know. But this one
that you and I occupy now and dwell on now, And look at the
starry heaven now. This one is about 6,000 years
old. Because God made man in the beginning
of creation. And we know how old man is. One
more verse. Look over in Deuteronomy chapter
24. Deuteronomy chapter 24. He says here in verse 2, And when she has departed out
of his house, she may go and be another man's wife, and then
he goes on to say, if the latter husband hate her, write her a
divorcement, and gives it in her hand, sends her out of his
house, or if he dies, then, in verse 4, the former husband is
not allowed to take her to himself again. Now your pastor has imagination
that he's... I did sometime I started imagining
these things. I can't help it and I laugh at
myself. But I can just imagine this happening because I know
human nature. Can't you just imagine, here's a fellow, here's
a Jew, and he and his wife start to get just a little bit older,
and she just ain't as pretty as she used to be. But he's noticed
this other woman over here. Man, she's a beautiful woman,
and she's not married, she's young. And he thinks, how am
I going to get rid of this wife? So he finds something wrong with
her, and he gives her a written bill of divorcement, and leaves
her and says, you go find you another husband. She goes and
finds another husband, and he doesn't live very long, he dies.
And this fellow, he goes over here and marries this beautiful,
beautiful woman. But boy, she turns out about
six months. All her beauty was outward. She's
a nag. And he hates it. He said, man,
my other wife was so much better than this. I realize now what
I've lost. I'm going to go back. No, you're
not going back over there either. You're stuck with the one you've
got or moving the cave somewhere. You're not going to get that
one back. So he did set some bounds, didn't he? And you know
that happened. How many guys you see now that
that's happened to? The grass is greener on that
side until they get over there and find out it's pretty bare.
That happened in my family, a member of my family. A friend of mine
did that. But it wasn't long until he realized,
man, I have messed up. He got his wife back, and when
he got her back, buddy, he was good to her from then on. But
they did regulate it. But look here in verse 5 now.
We'll finish this verse and we'll stop. When a man hath taken a new wife,
He shall not go out to war, neither shall he be charged with any
business, but he shall be free and home one year, and shall
cheer up his wife, which he has taken." He shall not go out to
war. Now you and I can understand
this, can't we? Boy, how many, especially back before we had
computers where they could communicate even on the other side of the
world somewhere. When you saw a young man and a young woman
get married, and he left a week later to go to war. Boy, you
just cringed, didn't you? Because you've seen it happen
so often. They're worlds apart. He's over there fighting a war.
Maybe she's over here and she's lonely. And you know what happens. It just don't last. So the Lord
knows what He's doing, doesn't He? When He says, When a young
man and a young woman gets married, there's this poor little Jewish
girl. She's been raised underneath her parents and they've been
strict. They've watched over her. They've protected her. And
now she's married this fellow. And to think that he's going
to leave next week and leave her at home by herself so vulnerable
and so lonely. The Lord said, No, that can't
be that way. And He forbid it to be that way.
He gave him the whole year. Couldn't send him off to war.
Couldn't send him off on any business. He said, let him stay
home. Now, he worked. That didn't mean
he quit working and had some sort of a welfare program to
pay the rent and buy the food and everything. He worked, but
he stayed home. And why did he stay home? To cheer up his wife. Now, you ladies who are married
to us men, you can understand why you need to be cheered up,
don't you? I pity anybody that's married to me, bless your heart.
I'm just telling the truth. But that's what they did, to
cheer up their wives. You know, isn't marriage a fragile
thing? We talked about divorce, but
you know, brothers and sisters, it's only by the grace of God
that anybody stays married. And that's the truth. It's difficult,
isn't it? It's not always easy. You wonder
how unconverted people do it. But it's just the goodness of
God that keeps anybody together. But this world that we live in,
man alive, the trials in it, the trials in the workplace,
the trials that's going on in your own heart, this business
of friendship and fellowship that a husband and a wife have
together, There may be trials and heartaches in this world,
but this relationship between the husband and the wife should
be one of cheering one another up. Always cheering one another
up. There is a verse where Solomon
made a wonderful statement. I have often thought about it.
The merry heart maketh a cheerful countenance. The merry heart
maketh the cheerful countenance. And for a man to spend some time
and get in the habit and have the attitude of cheering his
wife up. And the wife cheering the husband
up. Because a merry heart maketh
the cheerful countenance. It's like medicine, isn't it? It's medicine. And man, the world's
a hard place. It's hard raising kids. Hard
raising grandkids. Boy, that relationship between
the husband and his wife should make life a lot easier. If the
trouble's at work, if the trouble's in the world, boy, between the
heart of the husband and the heart of the wife, there should
be this cheering one another up. Jim was good at that, wasn't
he, Barb? Keeping Barb cheered up, and
Barb keeping Jim cheered up. And I tell you, these men that's
thinking grass is greener on the other side of the fence and
seeing, if they're married to this beautiful woman, they'll
see those women out there and they'll say, man, you got nothing
on my wife. You got nothing on my wife. And
they don't, baby. They don't. Lord bless you. I hope this lesson's been a blessing
to you. David, would you dismiss this? to be there and back in front
of you. How important it is for a very
couple to stay together and raise children at home. We see it's
so much destroying the standoff, the standoff of our nation, the
standoff of our church. I just ask that you help each
one of us to honor our memories, to honor our past, and to honor
the relationship of the way in which we found our people, to
you, Amen. Thank you, Dave. Lord bless
you all. Be careful going home.