Matthew: The King and His Kingdom:Mt. 19:1-12.pptx
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As we begin to explore Matthew chapter 19 the Pharisees challenge Jesus by asking him, “Is it lawful to divorce one’s wife for any cause?” He takes them back to the book of Genesis to show them and us that God created the covenant of marriage and He defined it long ago as being between one man and one woman who cleave together for life. Not satisfied with that answer the Pharisees challenge Jesus again, “Why then did Moses command one to give a certificate of divorce and send her away?” It is here that the Jewish religious leader grossly misrepresents Deuteronomy 24:1-4 because Moses never commanded divorce but it was permitted in the Mosaic Law if a wife was sexually unfaithful to her husband and here Jesus reaffirms what God established in the Hebrew Scriptures, “And I say to you: whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery.” On the other side, we see that not all people are called to marriage some are called singleness. Both choices honor God as they advance His gospel here on earth.
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Matthew: The King and His Kingdom:Mt. 19:1-12.pptx
- 1. Jesus’ Teaching on Divorce Matthew 19:1-12
- 2. Marking the End of the Fourth Discourse Καὶ ἐγένετο ὅτε ἐτέλεσεν ὁ Ἰησοῦς… And it happened when Jesus had finished… Narrative Discourse
- 4. A Building Crowd 21:9 And the crowds that went before him and that followed him were shouting, “Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the 19:2 And large crowds followed him, and he healed them there.
- 5. First Point The Ruling: Mt. 19:3-6
- 6. Deuteronomy 24 “When a man takes a wife and marries her, if then she finds no favor in his eyes because he has found some indecency in her, and he writes her a certificate of divorce and puts it in her hand and sends her out of his house, and she departs out of his house,
- 7. A Trap between Two Positions R. Hillel’s Teaching •“Something indecent” could be just about anything that annoys you. R. Shammai’s Teaching •“Something indecent” refers to adultery. POPULAR VIEW MINORITY VIEW
- 8. An important rabbinic principle of interpretation. “The older the weightier”
- 9. Leon Morris There is a saying, “Hard cases make bad law,” and it may be suggested that they make even worse ethics.
- 10. Second Point The Reasoning: Mt. 19:7-9
- 11. Matthew 19:9 And I say to you: whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery.”
- 12. 4 Key Questions 1. What constitutes sexual immorality? 2. Why don’t the other gospel authors make this exception? 3. Does this exception allow for remarriage? 4. Is this the only biblical exception.
- 13. Third Point The Repercussions: Mt. 19:10-12
Editor's Notes
- Scripture Reading: Pastor Ryan Greeting: Pastor Steve When I was in my early-thirties I began working on a Palm Family Tree. By this point I had made email contact with several of my Norwegian and Finnish cousins. I did a lot of emailing back and forth with my second cousins Øyvind and Torgny in Norway and Ossi and Elizabeth in Finland. They filled out their side of the tree and I filled out the record of the American Palms. Shortly thereafter, Cindy and I met them all in person in Norway and Finland. We did some further work in person and when both sides of the family had made their entries, I sent a copy to my Aunt Esther, my Dad’s sister. I had learned so much and I thought she would be thrilled. But my Dad got a call. My first cousin Sandy did not like the fact that I included both of her marriages. To keep peace in the family, I omitted Pete the hippie, her first husband. My family tree is not entirely accurage. The point of my story is that I don’t believe that that particularly awkward conversationwith my Aunt would take place today, some 30 years later. The stigma of divorce is gone. It has become so incredibly common that few wince in describing a failed marriage. In many ways, our culture has become remarkably like the Jewish culture of Jesus’ day. And for that reason, he speaks prophetically to both the first century and the 21st century with equal force.
- Before we dig into our main topic, let’s take a quick look at the first two verses which help us to place where we are in the progression of this gospel. For the fourth time Matthew uses this formula of 8 Greek words in order to clearly signify that he is moving away from Jesus’ discourse and back to the narrative account of Jesus’ earthly ministry.
- The remainder of verse 1 describes Jesus’ Final Journey to Jerusalem. As you can see on the screen, it’s an odd path. Jesus goes from Galilee into northernmost Samaria. He then crosses the Jordan River into Perea and finally crosses the Jordan again at Jericho and heads toward Jerusalem. This route avoids the Gentile region of the Decapolis and the populated cities in Samaria. This is the typical route of Jewish pilgrims. Jesus has ministered in these other areas, as we have seen in the last few months. However, he has joined the faithful in journeying towards Jerusalem. There is a sense of urgency to this final journey… no rabbit trails or side missions.
- In verse two we read that “large crowds followed him, and he healed them there.” As you might expect, these healings only added to Jesus’ fellow travelers. Let’s jump ahead for a moment and look at Mt. 21:9 which describes Jesus’ Triumphal entry. And the crowds that went before him and that followed him were shouting, “Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest!” This is the same crowd. As Jesus continues his journey we will see this crowd build. By the time he enters Jerusalem, there are two crowds, a Jerusalem crowd before him and a crowd following him. These crowds converge in the event which we will look at next week, Palm Sunday.
- These preliminary verses set the context for our First Point today: The Ruling Matthew 19:3-6 3 And Pharisees came up to him and tested him by asking, “Is it lawful to divorce one's wife for any cause?” 4 He answered, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, 5 and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? 6 So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.” Verse three begins by telling us that the Pharisees have a purpose in coming to Jesus. This is, yet again, another test. It seems that the Pharisees have traveled to meet Jesus, just as they did when they sent a delegation to Galilee. This time, they seem to be waiting for him as he passed through Jordan and entered Judea. He is now on their turf, or so they think. The trap they set is a three-fold trap. The trap they set centers around a passage in Deuteronomy 24. The Pharisees were focused on the first verse:
- “When a man takes a wife and marries her, if then she finds no favor in his eyes because he has found some indecency in her, and he writes her a certificate of divorce and puts it in her hand and sends her out of his house, and she departs out of his house, This verse ends with a comma. It is not a complete thought, but this is where their focus stops. They have become pre-occupied by several words in verse 1: “Something indecent in her.” In typical rabbinical fashion, they muse over what this indecency might be and they split into two camps.
- One of the most respected Rabbis in the generation before Jesus was R. Hillel. Hillel was the most popular because he was the most lenient. We see this on so many levels in our society today. Who is the popular crowd in school? Where is the peer pressure most applied? We are pressured to embrace the positions that make the least demands on us. This was Hillel. As Pastor Ryan mentioned way back when we looked at Jesus’ earlier teaching on divorce in Matthew 5:31-32, Hillel taught that something indecent could be anything that annoys you. Burnt toast was a grounds for divorce. If your wife spoke badly of your parents, that was grounds for divorce. Or if she argued with you and her voice could be heard next door. That too was grounds for divorce. But it gets worse. One of Hillel’s disciples was Rabbi Akiba. Akiba said that if you see a woman prettier than your wife, that is an acceptable grounds to divorce her. Now, the competing school of thought was that of Rabbi Shammai. Shammai was the conservative, at least on the surface. He defined “something indecent” more narrowly as adultery. On first glance, it would seem that Jesus’ position would have aligned with Shammai’s. However, although Shammai’s rules were strict on paper, he permitted remarriage even when his rule was broken. So, for all intents and purposes there is little difference between these positions. I mentioned that there was a third trap. The third trap was to get Jesus to land in the same place as John the Baptist. John condemned Herod Antipas’ marriage to his brother’s wife, Herodias. His unwillingness to accept that divorce was the direct cause of his beheading. It would seem that the Pharisees were united in one thing… their desire to get rid of Jesus by trapping him between their various factions and the state. What Jesus does next is brilliant. He uses one of their own principles of interpretation against them and sidesteps their trap.
- An important rabbinic principle of interpreting Torah, or God’s Law, was “The older the weightier.” Earlier events in God’s Law set an earlier precedent. They were considered the most binding. Jesus could have argued on the basis of Deuteronomy 24. He could have demonstrated how they ripped verse 1 out of context and misapplied the text. However, he went back to the opening chapters of Genesis. The Pharisees were looking through the lens of divorce. Jesus is looking through a different lens, the lens of marriage. What was God’s original intent for mankind. It was God who created men and women. It was God who created the two genders, male and female. The reason that Supreme Court candidate, Judge Ketanji Jackson Brown, can’t answer the question, “What is a woman?” is very simple. She is looking through two wrong lenses. She is trying to answer this question through the lens of constitutional law and the additional lens of a progressivism that asserts that the constitution is a living document that must be reinvented by each generation. These are the wrong lenses. Scripture makes it clear. God created men and women differently. Jesus has a biblical view of gender. He also has a biblical view of marriage. Marriage is between one man and one woman. It is a one-flesh relationship. Marriage is more than a partnership. Partnerships can be broken. Marriage is a miracle of God that results in the unique blending of two people. Although their individuality is not lost, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. No written document can effectively dissolve a marriage. If you’ve gone through divorce, you understand this. Divorce is a ripping apart of two who have become one. It is painful and it leaves scars. Jesus effectively argued that the older teachings in Genesis 1 are the weightiest because they take us back to God’s intent.
- I found a powerful insight in Leon Morris’ commentary on Matthew: There is a saying, “Hard cases make bad law,” and it may be suggested that they make even worse ethics. In arguing on the basis of divorce, the Pharisees made bad laws and bad ethics. And when we create legalistic rules that fail to get to God’s heart, we fall into the same trap… the trap which Jesus so skillfully avoided.
- Second Point The Reasoning Matthew 19:7-9 7 They said to him, “Why then did Moses command one to give a certificate of divorce and to send her away?” 8 He said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so. 9 And I say to you: whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery.” I could have reused one of my earlier sermon points from the Sabbath Wars sermon and entitled this, “The Empire Strikes Back” The Pharisees do not want to join Jesus in Genesis. They can’t win their argument their. So they seek to lure him back into their trap. In essence, they refuse to allow Jesus to dismiss their argument from Deuteronomy 24. After all, this too is scripture, and these are also the words of Moses. If God’s intent was that marriages would remain intact, why then did Moses provide a mechanism for divorce. It may not be the oldest or the weightiest text but that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t have weight. Notice how Jesus contrasts God’s heart and man’s heart. The Pharisees treated divorce as a commandment but Jesus makes it clear that divorce was a thing permitted but not God’s best. There was an allowance that Moses made because of the hardness of men’s hearts. In order to fully understand this odd no man’s land between God’s perfect will and Moses’ legal permission we need to understand the breakdown that had occurred in Jewish society. God created men and women differently. However, although he established a certain hierarchy where the man would be the spiritual head of his household, he created them with equal talents and graces. It is only after mankind’s fall into sin that God says that the husband will rule over his wife. By the days of Moses men viewed this as a command by God, not a description of brokenness. Moses had to push back on the attempt to prevent women from inheriting property. It was an uphill struggle. And the Pharisees take this to the extremes. By Jesus’ day, women had almost no rights. Their husbands could grab a piece of paper, write a certificate of divorce and throw them out on the streets. He could keep the kids and strip her of her parental rights. The woman had no legal recourse. Many were literally forced into immorality. And a brutalized woman could not divorce her husband. Divorce was exclusively the domain of men. This is the context of Jesus’ statement that Moses permitted divorce because of men’s “hardness of heart.”
- Third Point The Repercussions Matthew 19:10-12 10 The disciples said to him, “If such is the case of a man with his wife, it is better not to marry.” 11 But he said to them, “Not everyone can receive this saying, but only those to whom it is given. 12 For there are eunuchs who have been so from birth, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by men, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Let the one who is able to receive this receive it.”