Mark 10:1-16

[0:00] We'll go with that. Good evening, church. Let's turn to Mark 10, verses 1 to 16.

[0:18] In the words of the priest from the princess bride, marriage is what brings us to Geza tonight. It's page 845.

[0:47] And it goes as follows. And he left there and went to the region of Judea and beyond the Jordan. And crowds gathered to him again. And again, as was his custom, he taught them.

[1:01] And Pharisees came up. And in order to test him, asked, Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife? He answered them, What did Moses command you?

[1:14] They said, Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of divorce and to send her away. And Jesus said to them, Because of your hardness of heart, he wrote you this commandment.

[1:26] But from the beginning of creation, God made them male and female. Therefore, a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.

[1:39] So they are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.

[1:50] And in the house, the disciples asked him again about this matter. And he said to them, Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her.

[2:03] And if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery. And they were bringing children to him that he might touch them. And the disciples rebuked them.

[2:16] But when Jesus saw it, he was indignant and said to them, Let the children come to me. Do not hinder them. For to such belongs the kingdom of God. Truly, I say to you, Whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it.

[2:34] And he took them in his arms and blessed them, laying his hands on them. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, I thank you for this time that you have allowed us to gather in worship.

[2:49] Lord, I ask that as the word goes forth that you bless it, that you soften the hearts of the hearers. Lord, by your spirit, continue to shape each of us into the image of your son.

[3:02] As we seek to obey what you tell us to do, Lord. I pray these things in the name of your son, Jesus Christ, and by the power of your Holy Spirit. Amen. So, in going through the book of Mark, we've been keeping an eye on who Christ is and what it means for us to follow him.

[3:20] In these few verses, we get some specific teachings and some specific guidelines. Not only what it means to follow him, but how to do it. He does that in chapter 10 by reversing expectations.

[3:33] Two statements. The two shall become one, and adults are to be as children. When we dive into chapter 10, we see the Pharisees trying to trap Jesus.

[3:46] Verse 2. And the Pharisees came up in order to test him, and they asked him, is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife? So, what is this trap?

[3:57] The first thing we're going to have to learn about is what Jewish people were talking about in this divorce issue. There are essentially two camps. One would say that a man can divorce his wife for any cause whatsoever, even if she burns his food.

[4:13] The other would say that divorce can only take place for a serious offense. Specifically, premarital sex would be one of them. So, Jesus seemingly has two options.

[4:24] He could answer yes, but if he answers yes, he's going to be vocally aligning himself with one party, and members of the other party could stir up opposition. But if he says no, he could be accused of trying to negate the law of Moses, which is not on the list of best things to do in front of Jewish authorities.

[4:43] So, all things considered, the Pharisees have got him. Jesus is backed into a corner with nowhere to turn, right? Oh, no. Jesus does not fall into that trap.

[4:54] Instead, he digs right to the heart of the issue. What the Pharisees meant as a political maneuver, Jesus uses as an opportunity to reveal to us the divine intention of marriage.

[5:06] As with all of Jesus' teachings, we get a glimpse into the mind of God. What does he say? Well, he begins by turning the question back on the Pharisees.

[5:16] He says, What did Moses command you? They respond with their understanding of Deuteronomy 24, that Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of divorce and to send her away.

[5:29] But why did Moses allow that? According to Jesus, it was because of their hardness of heart. Note Jesus' consistency in tone and focus.

[5:40] The questions posed are general. Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife? Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of divorce and to send her away. But Jesus' response is personal.

[5:52] What did Moses command you? He gave this commandment because of your hardness of heart. You can feel the Pharisees squirming. First of all, he's saying that the general teaching on divorce is neither ideal nor is it indicative of God's purpose for marriage.

[6:11] Like much of the Mosaic law, while it is good and holy, it's not the fullness of God's will for his people. In essence, the talking about divorce is an allowance made because of Israel's and our sinful hardness of heart.

[6:27] Too often we, like the Jewish people of Jesus' time and before, see divorce as an unfortunate occurrence, but one that is necessary when we fall out of love or find ourselves having irreconcilable differences.

[6:42] But that's not the paradigm that Jesus is setting here. His teaching is clear from the next few verses, starting in verse 6. But from the beginning of creation, God made them male and female.

[6:54] Therefore, a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. So they are no longer two, but one flesh.

[7:07] What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate. One can imagine Jesus hitting the Pharisees with this statement and dropping the proverbial microphone.

[7:17] What began as an attempted trap actually results in an accusation and the invoking of divine authority. I want us to catch what he's just said.

[7:29] The central idea of Christ's statement is that marriage is a divinely ordained institution. The agent in these verses is God. God created us male and female.

[7:40] When it says that the man shall hold fast to his wife, that's a passive verb. The man will be joined to his wife, presumably by God. In saying that the two are no longer two, but one flesh, Christ declares God's intention for marriage is permanence.

[7:59] The divine pairing of the vows and sexual consummation in marriage seals the deal. This is not a thing that you just get into because, well, we've been dating for a while and it's the logical next step.

[8:11] If you're going to get into this, you better be good and sure you're in it for life. Till death do you part. Christ puts the lid on this in verse 9 when he says, what God has joined together, let not man separate.

[8:28] The contrast made here is between God and what God has done and man and what man seeks to do. Seeking to separate what God has joined?

[8:39] Do we see the perversity in that? Do we see that this is literally the tearing of a one flesh union? This is why the halls of divorce courts are the most miserable halls of a courthouse.

[8:54] This is the scriptural reason for the fact that the three most stressful events in a person's life, according to the American Institute of Stress, are the death of a spouse first, which is God breaking the union, and divorce and marital separation in spots two and three.

[9:11] What takes place in a divorce is not that two people disagree and peacefully go their separate ways. What God has joined, man has sought to separate.

[9:22] And chances are, we have all, in one way or another, suffered the effects of that trauma. Desiree and I, over winter break, got into watching My Strange Addiction on TLC.

[9:36] It's a show where individuals suffer from strange, often dangerous, compulsive behaviors, like eating couch cushions or drinking gasoline or bathing in bleach. Just all kinds of ridiculous things.

[9:48] But there are three major reasons why these behaviors started. It could have been the death of a family member. It could have been sexual or physical abuse. But the most common one was divorce of their parents.

[10:04] As children witnessing the breaking of a covenant, something inside them snapped. Witnessing what is essentially portrayed as decapitation scripturally, the separation of the husband as head from the wife as body, is not something that anyone walks away from without scars.

[10:25] Of course, this does not elevate divorce to some kind of unforgivable sin level. In all such situations, Christ reaches out when we turn to him in repentance. When he met the woman at the well in John 4 and referred to her past five husbands and the current man that she lived with who was not her husband, he still offered her living water.

[10:46] But I hope we see from this that divorce is not to be taken lightly. Ideally, it ought not even be a Christian option. But how in the world do we do that?

[10:59] When the disciples hear these words in Matthew, they respond saying, if such is the case of a man with his wife, it's better not to marry. How can married couples, specifically Christian married couples, uphold that standard?

[11:13] And no remarriage? Doesn't that seem unnecessarily restrictive? Not just that, what about single people? All this talk about marriage seems to be leaving them out, right? Well, let's see why this leads into a discussion of children.

[11:29] Verses 13 through 16. And they were bringing children to him that he might touch them, and the disciples rebuked them.

[11:41] But when Jesus saw it, he was indignant and said to them, let the children come to me, do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of God. Truly I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it.

[11:54] So after saying these things about divorce, people are bringing their children to Jesus, and the disciples shoo the children away. After all, they're children, and this is the Messiah.

[12:06] I mean, Jesus just, two chapters ago, Jesus just came down off of a mountain, having been transformed with radiant, blazingly white clothes. Surely Jesus has better things to do than deal with snot-nosed kids.

[12:19] As Pastor Greg pointed out last week, children are helpless, needy, and they make a mess all the time. Surely Jesus doesn't have time for them, right? Again, wrong.

[12:31] Jesus got mad at the disciples for pushing them away. And he got mad because the disciples, as is often their problem, especially in the book of Mark, don't get it. And they don't get it in the same way that we often don't get it.

[12:45] They don't understand that to enter into the kingdom of God, in order to be able to do what Christ tells us to do, what he desires us to do, we must receive the kingdom of God as a child would.

[12:58] We must be like children. So what does that mean? I can tell you what it doesn't mean. It's not a reference to innocence. We've got a cultural understanding of children as innocent creatures that's unhelpful and unbiblical.

[13:13] And I'm sure that anyone here who has children can back me up when I say, well, just from, you know, studying the habits of babies, that babies are little selfish monsters. Gifts from God, of course, according to Psalm 127, a heritage from the Lord, but from birth, we know their and our sinful nature.

[13:36] Crying and whining to get what you want, willful disobedience, no care for whether the parents are sleeping, or the fact that it's four o'clock in the morning and the baby's woken you up every 45 minutes.

[13:47] That doesn't sound innocent to me. So what is Christ saying here? He's saying that we, like children, must act in continuous dependence on our loving Father.

[14:03] This goes back to what Greg said last week about children. They're helpless, needy, and they make a mess all the time. Is that not us? Are we not helpless when we face situations that we can't control and don't understand?

[14:16] Are we not constantly needy? Do we not make constant messes, whether in our relationships or in our personal lives? But the advantage that we have is that, as John says, to all who received Christ, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.

[14:35] To receive the kingdom of God as a child is to live a life where you consistently remind yourself of your dependence on the power, love, and support of your heavenly Father.

[14:47] To go back to this portrayal as children, when we soil ourselves in sin, it is the Father who cleans us up. As a matter of fact, that's why he sent his son.

[15:00] His son got down and dirty, sharing with us our experiences of pain, hunger, and thirst, and ultimately being brutally tortured, humiliated, and killed. But he did that to save us.

[15:13] He did that because we were helpless to save ourselves. And by that sacrifice, he reminds us, as he says in John 15, 5, apart from me, you can do nothing.

[15:25] So how does this help us with the preceding scripture about marriage and divorce? Well, it's a reminder of our dependence on our loving Father for the strength and resolve to consistently do what he wants us to do.

[15:41] When you get two sinful people into a marriage, which is every marriage, a deep, profound, and intensely personal relationship, stuff gets real complicated and real messy real fast.

[15:56] But this is at its core a question of discipleship. We need to consistently remind ourselves of the grace and forgiveness that he shows us when we repent so that we can show that same grace and forgiveness to our spouses.

[16:10] We must remember the love that he showed us so that we can show that same love to our spouses. We must remember, believe in, and meditate on his death so that the husband and wife in Christian marriage can die continually to themselves for one another.

[16:29] We don't get married for self-actualization. We don't get married to foist our own selfishness on another person demanding that they satisfy us or we roll out. Therefore, they are no longer two, but one.

[16:44] What God has joined, let no man separate. Christian marriage is meant to exemplify Christ's relationship with the church. Permanent, uniting, divinely ordained, and beautiful.

[17:00] And that's where I want us to end. The beauty. Paul calls marriage a mystery that refers to Christ's relationship with the church. Now, when we hear the word mystery, we think a whodunit or something that's mysterious, inaccessible, out in the ether somewhere and we'll never figure out what it's about.

[17:20] That's not, that's not how mysteries function in scripture. When we see a mystery in the New Testament, it refers to something that we couldn't have figured out but something that God had to reveal.

[17:31] In many cases, it's something hinted at in the Old Testament and more fully revealed in the New. The meaning of marriage is just such a mystery. So, married people, how is your marriage to image Christ's relationship with the church?

[17:46] The constant self-sacrificial love that is the cornerstone of your relationship with Christ, the fact that he died for you when you were still his enemy, that is to be the defining factor of your marriage.

[18:01] That dynamic empowered by the Holy Spirit is the glorious glue that holds you together. It has its unique challenges but it also has its unique rewards.

[18:12] The world needs to see that and our church needs to see that. Now, for the single, to the engaged like myself, this seems perhaps like an exaltation of human marriage above all else.

[18:28] So, here's another secret. Jewish marriage came in three stages. First, the couple would get engaged which would be a contract to marry each other at a future time.

[18:39] The next step would be betrothal where the couple is considered legally married but they don't have conjugal rights yet. The bride lives with her parents while the bridegroom goes to prepare a place for her.

[18:55] Some of you can already see where this is going. The last stage of the marriage is the actual wedding feast after which the couple consummates their marriage. One could see the gospel work in three stages as well.

[19:09] Christ has been promised to us from the Old Testament, we might say, from the law and the prophets. In his death and his resurrection, he has secured us legally, but we don't quite have conjugal rights yet, so to speak.

[19:25] Paul says in Romans 3, 21 to 25, But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the law and the prophets bear witness to it. The righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe.

[19:41] For there is no distinction, for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God and are justified by his grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forth as a propitiation by his blood to be received by faith.

[19:58] This redemption in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as an atoning sacrifice for our sin, when we receive it by faith, we are declared just.

[20:10] That's what justified means for us. By faith, we are legally declared not guilty, not on our own merit, but on the all-sufficient merit of our Lord Jesus Christ.

[20:23] All of that is to say, as the betrothed spouse is legally married, so have we been legally acquired by our heavenly bridegroom. And as Christians, we eagerly await to be reunited to our Lord and to enjoy his presence for eternity.

[20:41] As single Christians, we have a unique opportunity for, as Paul says, undistracted devotion to the Lord. And I assure you, Christ has more for you in his person than any other person on this earth.

[20:56] You see, human marriage is meant to be permanent as long as both parties are alive. But when we die, that's actually when the real feast begins. That's the real marriage that we're a part of.

[21:10] As Christians, by faith and by utter grace, we have entered into this marriage. And it's the Holy Spirit's cooperative work with us that's basically just wedding prep.

[21:20] sanctification is just that. Preparing ourselves and being prepared for our wondrous bridegroom. Marriage is what brings us together.

[21:31] But not just human marriage. We're talking about the marriage that we have with our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. And as Christians, regardless of our marital state, that is the reality that should animate us and excite us, motivating us to live the lives that God commands us to live through Christ and enables us to live by His Holy Spirit.

[21:58] Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you for purchasing us with a price.

[22:15] Lord, all of us have sinned and fallen short of your glory. But Lord, by faith, when we take hold of Christ's sacrifice, we know that when you look at us, you no longer see us and all of our flaws and all of our constant sin, Lord, but we have been washed by the blood of Christ.

[22:40] Lord, I pray for all those present here that you continue to wash them, continue to forgive each and every one of us as we continue to struggle in this age that we're currently in.

[22:53] But Lord, I ask that you continue to prepare each and every one of us for that glorious wedding feast that we have to look forward to. Lord, for the married couples, bless their unions.

[23:05] Lord, remind them that their marriage is an image of Christ and the church. And as Christ would not leave His church, I pray that that same commitment is present in each of the marriages here, Lord.

[23:20] For the single Christians here, Lord, I pray that I pray that our devotion to the Lord continue to grow. That for all of us our relationship with you is first and foremost.

[23:32] Lord, I pray these things in the name of your Son, Jesus Christ, and by the power of your Holy Spirit. Amen. So, after every sermon in the evening service, sorry, you can be seated.

[23:45] I'm sorry, that was my fault. So, after every evening service, we have a question and answer portion. So, you may ask whatever question you wish.

[23:59] It can be about the passage, it can be about anything that came up over the course of the sermon, anything at all. Yes, yes.

[24:09] Yes. I was commanded to, that's what I, but, but second part?

[24:27] Okay, so, first of all, why this one?

[24:44] As I said, I was commanded to. This was the weekend that Desiree was going to be in town. I had chosen another week. I told her that. She said she was going to be in town this week, so I'd better be preaching that week.

[25:00] And it just happens to be the weekend of Valentine's Day, which is also a sermon on divorce, so it's just like, okay, I guess this is happening. As for how it's, as for how it's affected me, going into, so, so going into, you know, proposing and going into the engagement and all that, my first, my first emotion has always been excitement and anticipation.

[25:27] As I've continued to do this, specifically doing this, doing this kind of prep, it was sobering for me in seeing what, what Christ says marriage is.

[25:41] Ideally, in, in, in it being the picture, in it being the picture of Christ's relationship with the church, like, that's a, that's a really, really big deal. It's made me really even more excited, but it's, but it's, but, but, but that excitement is also, it's present with a very, very deep soberness about the, just, just the, just the magnanimity of the, of the institution that I'm in, that I'm entering into.

[26:07] But for me, what's been really important for me, and this is what initially prompted me to, to, to, to propose, was essentially when the Lord revealed to me that the, that, that the two of us would bring more glory to him together than apart from one another.

[26:20] And at that, and at that point I was like, okay, well I just gotta buy this ring and go ahead and do this. So, at that point, there it was. But, but, but this, but this preparation process has, has, it's, it's sobered me, it's sobered me deeply.

[26:39] As I, as I, as I think about the commitment that I'm gonna make and 160 days. Yeah.

[26:50] What's that? Uh. Main Wohn- Mm-hmm.

[27:05] Does marriage have any meaning?

[27:26] I think, and I think this comes from, it comes from, I mean, what Christ says in Mark, and also what Paul says in Ephesians, but I think that we as Christians must be willing to stand on the fact that marriage does have meaning.

[27:43] And I think we have to stand on that because it's a model of Christ's relationship with the church. And so as such, that's not something that we can sacrifice.

[27:54] And I really think that the burden is really on us specifically because God has told us what marriage is about. And so as such, the marriages in the church, that's something that we have to be willing to commit to.

[28:14] A knowledge that when I enter into this, I'm entering into something that is to represent Christ's relationship with the church. So in that sense, yes, marriage absolutely does have meaning.

[28:26] And I think that we as the church have a unique responsibility to really be an image of that. Because, I mean, I deeply believe that it's only by the power of the Holy Spirit that marriage can be as beautiful as God meant for it to be.

[28:45] And so, and we as the body of Christ have the Holy Spirit dwelling in us. And so I think that's something that we need to consistently uphold.

[29:03] Yeah. Yeah. What is the best way to cut this path on people that are divorced to take this path? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Sure, sure, sure.

[29:16] So what is the, or what's the best thing for couples who are divorced to deal with this passage? So one of the things, and this is, I mean, Paul talks about this too, but the message of it is that there are essentially two things, two things to do if you are divorced.

[29:39] You either remain unmarried or you're reconciled to your husband. One of the things that, and I think this is another thing that I think the church needs to be really adamant about is that the single life is not a torturous, unsustainable life.

[30:05] It's, and I, and I tried to, I tried to touch on this a little bit in the sermon, but the single, the single person as single has a, has a unique opportunity to image Christ's relationship with the church.

[30:19] And so, and so both options, whether it is remaining unmarried or, or being reconciled, or being, or being reconciled to your spouse, in both situations, there is, there is an image of Christ in the church that you are to, that, that we're to shine forth.

[30:36] And in, and in all those cases, we always seek reconciliation as the first, as the first, as, as the first option. But sometimes that's, sometimes that doesn't, that doesn't work out.

[30:48] But our commitment to the Lord is first, is first and foremost. And so that's, that's the, that's the response to that. But one of, but, but, but also as I said, I don't want it to seem like divorce is some kind of unforgivable sin that like, if you're, if you're divorced, we kick you out of the church and we're no longer fellowship with you.

[31:05] That's, that's absolutely not the way that we, the way that we ever want to, want to approach it. As I was saying, you know, it's a, it's a painful, it's a deeply, deeply painful process.

[31:18] And we as the church should be willing to come up, to come alongside one another through that, through that pain, praying for one another. So. Yeah, Matt. Yeah, so why don't you touch on just in your answer, but our society gives us a lot of bad, I mean, we have good, you know, examples like this sermon and God's words tell us what a good marriage is, but at that same time we have our society, you know, bombarding us with also, you know, their own marriage of what marriage is like.

[31:49] Yeah. For example, if you see on a new television show, you look at a marriage, it's usually the woman who's calling this out to the man who just says there, like, yes, David, yes, whatever you say. there, you know, the law is good.

[32:01] And the legalistic things are not the law, but what you should expect and, you know, there's nothing to do wrong with it. And then, on the flip side, you know, the church is not necessarily, I mean, I think it's better at doing this, but at the same time as you were just talking about, you know, the church can, especially certain churches can really crush it, but if you're not married, you're somehow a second class, you know, Christian type thing or certain notions about marriage can be messed up as well.

[32:32] So, can you comment on some of those things and just how, you know, what are the lies and pitfalls that perhaps crashed through your own personal, your most commonly called religious subjections.

[32:46] It's up to you. Sure. Oh. Oh. Oh. Traps that we are particularly parallel.

[33:19] Oh. Oh. No, I want to do this. No, this is, no, I want to do this. Yeah.

[33:32] It was kind of, okay. Okay. I'll express an iteration of it. So, I'll say, okay, so like what is, we'll say, what's a big, what's a big danger that we'll say that the church can fall into when it comes to, we'll say specific, just marriage.

[33:54] Let's just say a danger to fall into when it comes to conceiving of it, preaching it, whatever. We'll do that. Okay. So, I think, so we'll, I'll just, I'll just pick one because there's all this stuff.

[34:07] One is that, that second class citizen thing that you were, that you were, that you were, that you were talking about before. Because it's funny when Paul, when Paul is talking to the Corinthians, when you get all that, you know, it's, it's, it's better to marry than to burn and all that, all that, all that kind of stuff.

[34:24] He's speaking to them where marriage is seen as a bad, seen as a bad thing. It's like, you just don't, don't do it. To which his response is, no, it's a good thing.

[34:36] While I would like you all to be single because then you could be like me and you could have this undistracted devotion to the Lord, I understand that there, that, that not everyone is gifted in that, that not everyone is gifted in that way.

[34:49] Christ essentially says that in the parallel passage in Matthew 19 where he says that there are some, there are some who have been eunuchs from birth, some who have been made, some who were made eunuchs by men and some who have made themselves eunuchs for the, for the sake of the kingdom of heaven.

[35:06] But, the thing is, and some, and something that I, that I, that I wanted to emphasize here is that the single, the single life and the married life, both of them have their, have their, have their unique challenges and both have, and both have unique benefits.

[35:23] There are things that, there are things that, there are things that, are much easier for single people than for married people. Things that are much easier for married people than for single people. And so, one of the things that the church, one of the ways that the church can live that out is by married people offering hospitality to single people and single people offering hospitality to married people.

[35:48] There's a capacity of time and flexibility that single people have that married people don't. There are resources that married people have that single people don't have access to.

[36:00] And if we're to be truly, I mean, as the body of Christ, that's something that we should be willing to support one another in. And single people, pray for the marriages in the church.

[36:13] Because if this is meant to be an image of Christ in the church, this is something that requires constant prayer. And married people, pray for the single people in the congregation.

[36:27] Because there are deep, deep, deep, intense struggles that go on in the single person's mind. Even whether it's dealing with kind of unchecked, in some cases, just unchecked selfishness.

[36:41] Because when you're on your own, you know, I can do whatever I want in my apartment. I don't know, like nobody knows. And so, but that's dangerous. And so there's a support in both arenas that needs to happen, I think.

[37:00] Yeah. Yeah. Hi, Mindy. Why does Moses allow the Lord?

[37:11] Why? Why does Moses allow the Lord? Good. Good, good, good. So the question is, it's a difference between what does Moses command and what does Moses permit?

[37:22] So the commandment is whoever divorces, like basically, like the commandment is never, there is never a command to divorce in scripture. Never a command to divorce. Never a command, if someone does this, divorce them.

[37:34] No. The command is whoever divorces his wife must write her a certificate of divorce. Which is to say that it's an issue of justice.

[37:46] If you marry, if you marries, if a man were to marry a woman and then just put her out on the street, she would be utterly defenseless. The certificate of divorce would allow, would essentially allow her to remarry, which is like, it's a safety, it's a safety issue.

[38:05] And so one of, so that's kind of one of the, I think that's one of the things that Jesus was referring to when he says, he did this because of your hardness of heart. It was because it's like, why would you put, why would you, first of all, why would you divorce your wife is the idea.

[38:20] Because that's not what marriage was meant. Marriage was never meant to have this kind of thing. But the commandment to give a certificate of divorce was specifically, you know, to maintain that justice so that women wouldn't be, you know, left out defenseless.

[38:39] But what Jesus is essentially doing here is he's, I mean, he's showing us, he's showing us the way that it's supposed to be. And in that next part that we see about children, he's giving us how that's supposed to happen.

[38:53] He gives us the Holy Spirit so that this can be a reality. And I think that's, I think that's where, I think that's where we need to focus our attention. Yeah.

[39:05] But then it said in Mark that if you are divorced, you're not going to be there. In other words, if you're a certificate of divorce, doesn't make a person safe by allowing them to marry and it has to be not.

[39:23] Right. So this is the, and this is him dealing with, there are a number of Jewish, there are a number of Jewish schools at the time, going back and forth about what this means, who can divorce, who can, all that kind of stuff.

[39:42] But if you look at just Jesus' response to the question, where the question is, is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife? It just seems that his answer, if you had to choose between yes or no, it just seems that his answer would be no.

[39:58] In which case, that, that, that, this, this is, this is not even a thing that he, that he wants Christians to even deal with. The, the answer, the, the question of the, the question of the certificate was an issue.

[40:15] I mean, that was, it was an, it was an, it was an issue for the Jewish people at the time. And, and it was, let me think of the best. Yeah, I think that, I, I, I mean, I really think the best, I think, I really think the best way to approach that is just that.

[40:35] Christ, Christ in his statement is saying, this is not the way, this is not the way that it's been, that that it's been meant to, that it's been meant to be. All, all those things that he was saying about a certificate of divorce and all those things were allowances because of their, because of their hardness of heart.

[40:50] But now, in the church, he's, he's, and now that he's been resurrected, ascended, and sent the, and sent the Holy Spirit, there's a new, there's a new capacity for us to be able to do what he's, what he's commanded us to do.

[41:05] So. Okay. And, and I'll be, I'll be around. We can still continue this conversation. Thanks, guys. Bye.

[41:25] Thank you.

[41:55] Thank you.