Mark 10:1-12

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Jesus then left that place and went into the region of Judea and across the Jordan again. Crowds of people came to him, and as was his custom, he taught them. Some Pharisees came and tested him by asking, is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife? What did Moses command you? He replied.

They said Moses permitted a man to write a certificate of divorce and send her away. It was because your hearts were hard that Moses wrote you this law. Jesus replied, but at the beginning of creation, God made them male and female. For this reason, a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh. So they are no longer two, but one flesh.

Therefore, what God has joined together, let no one separate. When they were in the house again, the disciples asked Jesus about this. He answered, anyone who divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery against her. And if she divorces her husband and marries another man, she commits adultery.

Thank you so much for reading that for us. Please do keep those Bibles open.

Rachel's mouthing something at me. Oh, 1014. Apologies. That will take you to Mark, chapter 10. And I'm just going to ask God to help us as we look at that passage together.

Lord Jesus, we love you and we want to be like you. And so would you speak to us clearly today? Would it be that we would hear your voice, not mine, this morning? I pray so, by your spirit work in me and in us, that that would be the case. Amen.

I don't know if you've ever been asked a really tricky question, a really tricky question. Well, Jesus is given one right here. We're told where he is. He's crossed across the Jordan. And then some Pharisees, verse two, came and tested him by asking, is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?

This is a tricky question. We're told where Jesus is because Jesus has just crossed to be, well, very near where John the Baptist, his relative, was beheaded. Why was John the Baptist beheaded? Well, because he criticised the divorce and marriage of Herod and Herodias. And here is Jesus being asked a question about divorce and remarriage, right in that region.

You see, this is a tricky question. It's a dangerous question for Jesus to be answering.

Let's be honest, it would be a tricky question if it was asked in South Yorkshire in 2025 as well, wouldn't it? Because there is very little that is more painful and necessarily more public than divorce. And I'm acutely aware, as I speak with us here in this room, that There are all sorts of people here, but very few of us will be unaffected by divorce. Some of us will be divorced and remarried. Others of us will be divorced and not remarried.

Others of us will be going through divorce. Others of us have loved ones who are divorced. And at each and every time that is very painful. One of my prayers today is that we hear what God is saying to us and we don't use this as a stick to beat others. Jesus wants to talk to us about our hearts.

I'm also aware and want to preface this sermon by saying that statistically speaking, in a room the size of this, there will be some for whom our marriages are a place of abuse. And if that is you, and if you are in a place where your spouse is causing you harm or causing harm to the children under your care, let me say it is morally right that you do something about that. It is morally right that you step away either for a time or permanently from that situation. Please do not use this sermon as an excuse to convince yourself that it's somehow your fault or that you need to stay in that situation. We as a church care about that.

We as a church want to stop that. If that is you today, please, please speak to someone. Speak to me or email. Safeguardinglsaintstotley church that will take you to a safeguarding officer who will be able to help you. If you go down to the, to the hall in the toilets, they are safe single sex spaces where you can go and there are numbers on the wall in the men's and the women's as well as the accessible toilet that you can use.

Please use those numbers. Please get in touch if that is you. And I know I'm labouring that, but I'm labouring it for a reason. Because Jesus says some hard things in this passage and I don't want them to be misheard. So what does this passage say?

Jesus is asked this really difficult question, is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife? So what does Jesus do? Well, he replies, well, if this is a question about lawfulness, what does the law say? What does Moses command? And they respond, moses permitted a man to write a certificate of divorce and send her away.

Notice there's a change in the language. Jesus says, what does the law say? What does Moses command? The response Moses permitted. You see, the Pharisees go back to a part of God's word in Deuteronomy where Moses speaks about divorce, but he's not actually speaking directly about divorce.

He's actually speaking about what happens in the case after a divorce has happened about a way of protecting those who are vulnerable in that situation. And so what we see actually, and Jesus points us to, is this is not something that is legislated. Often people will come to church and they will want to know what is the law on marriage and divorce? What is it that you will legislate on this?

And actually, Jesus doesn't legislate here.

He says Moses doesn't legislate here. The Bible recognises that there are times when marriages break down and divorce is necessary, but it doesn't legislate for it. And so often what we long for is for religion to legislate. Now, in the time that this was written, there were plenty of schools of thought. There was one prominent rabbi who would teach that in the case of adultery, and adultery only, not only may there be divorce, but there must be divorce.

There was another school of thought that was much more open to divorce. And they said, well, actually, if a spouse burns the dinner, you can divorce them. There was actually another school of thought that literally said, if somebody is more pleasing to the eye, you can divorce them. Now, you see what happens when the legislation comes in is that the marriage becomes as weak as that thing. Can you imagine being in a marriage that is only as strong as the next burnt dinner?

See, if we're coming to marriage and we're thinking into the legislation, we're automatically in a place of weakness within the marriage or weakening of the marriage. It's a bit like, I don't know how many of you have read the small print on your broadband connection at home. I'm guessing not very many of you, but I'm guessing that if you have, you've read it for a reason, because you want to change your broadband supply and you want to know if you're going to pay for it. Right? Jesus is saying, as we focus in on the legislation, the danger is that we focus in on the way out of a marriage.

Now, there are reasons why divorce is sometimes necessary, but Jesus is not focusing on the legislation. Now, it should be said actually, that actually, if we're focusing in on the legislation of marriage, that doesn't work in any way of marriage, does it? If I think of marriage as a sort of a contract that I'm in, that's not a great way of doing marriage. If you're thinking, do you know, the way in which I will remain married to my spouse is by fulfilling the right legislation. I buy flowers every third Wednesday.

I make sure that the bins go out on that day. I Make sure that I speak in this certain way. We know that doesn't work. In fact, what the legislation can do is it can often make the vulnerable more vulnerable. In this case, see, if all it takes is for you to cross that line of burning the dinner, well, then the more financially able one can go off and still be financially able, and still the one who is more vulnerable becomes even more vulnerable.

The more charismatic partner is able to go off and find themselves. Find the vulnerable one is made more vulnerable.

And of course, there's a problem when we come down to legislation in these areas, and the problem is often that the legislation is always going to be too vague. So if you came in here and I was to say, do you know what the church's position is? Let's take what the majority of Christians would say, which is that divorce is permissible for adultery or desertion, and within that is abuse.

If we were to say that, then of course, the question comes how much adultery is it that spouse who's had the lustful thought of somebody else, Is that enough adultery? Or a spouse who slips into watching pornography or is slightly flirtatious? Is it when there's that drunken night out and there's that kiss? Is it when there's an extended affair? At what point is it the level of adultery that we say, okay, that's okay, or desertion?

Is it the desertion that is, well, that they are a workaholic and they're never really around? Is it the partner who is emotionally unavailable? Is that enough desertion?

Is it the couple who sex is always a chore and actually it feels like sexually they're unavailable to one another? Is that enough desertion? Or is it when they walk out and they don't come back? It is that you see, the problem about trying to draw a line and legislate on these things is it's never as simple as that. It's never as simple as that.

But the bigger problem is that when we're looking at the legislation, we're looking at the ways out. I like snowboarding. And one of the things that snowboarders sometimes do is that they sometimes slide down sort of rails or long chutes. And one of the things that you're meant to do when you're doing that and you're taught to do all the time is always look at the end of the rail that you're sliding down. Because if you look either side, then whether you mean to or not, that's where you end up going.

And what Jesus is doing is he's saying, I want to reset where you're looking in marriage. So he says, what did Moses command you? They replied, moses permitted a man to write a certificate of divorce and send her away. And Jesus says, it's because your hearts were hard that Moses wrote you this law. Jesus says that there are times when divorce happens, but it always happens because of hard hearts on the part of one or the other.

In other words, Jesus says, there's no such thing as no fault divorce on both sides. Now, please, if you are here and you are divorced, and that's part of your story, I'm not saying that you are any worse than anybody else. Jesus makes it clear there's no such thing as no fault life. But within marriages, when marriages break down, there is hardness of heart. And normally, not always, but normally there is hardness of heart, at least on some level, within both parties.

It might be that it's the hardness that says, I'm not willing to forgive, or I'm not willing to change, or I'm not willing to have that hard conversation, or I'm not willing to listen anymore. I'm going to remove myself from this situation. And Jesus says because of hardness of hearts, there are times when divorce is necessary. But he goes on, but at the beginning of creation, God made them male and female. For this reason, a man will leave his father and mother and be united with his wife.

And the two will become one flesh. And they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore, what God has joined together, let no one separate. Jesus says that instead of focusing on the law and the legislation, focus on the time before the hard hearts. He takes two verses from the start of Genesis, and he kind of mashes them together.

And he says, male and female in marriage come together, and they are not just kind of biologically one flesh, but actually there is something more that is going on in the act of marriage. He says, spiritually, God unites them together as one flesh. This is part of the reason why divorce is so painful. And it's always painful, even when it's necessary, because you have two people who are spiritually one flesh united by God. And as much as it would hurt to cut off an arm or a leg from your body, to part your one flesh into multiple parts, so divorce hurts.

It is separating one flesh.

Now, what does that mean? Well, here I stand before you as I believe one flesh. You know, I've got the same skin going round my leg as my arms, as my head. Now, there are times in life, and even within our church family, we'll see this in the next few weeks, where, for whatever reason, I might need to remove a part of my body, I may need to amputate a limb. And that is necessary sometimes.

But what do I do? I do everything that I can to avoid that being the case. I long to keep that limb as part of my body. So I take the antibiotics or I walk with a crutch, or I put the right brace on that part of my body in order to do my best to keep that limb attached. There are times when that limb needs to be taken away, but I do my best to keep it.

What's Jesus saying about marriage? He's saying, husband and wife are one flesh. Do your best. With all the caveats that we've spoken about before, do your best to remain one flesh.

That means that if you're married today, do your best to remain married, whether that's your first marriage or second or third or fourth or fifth. If you're married today, do your best to remain married. You are one flesh with your spouse. If you are not married today, do your best to encourage the married couples around you to remain married. How do we do that?

Well, we look at our hearts. Where is it that my heart is getting hard? Where is it that I am perhaps not listening or saying, sorry, I can't change my spouse's heart, not directly. I can pray for them, but I can't change them directly. I can work on my own.

Where is it today that if you are married, you're perhaps going back to the legal stuff and you're thinking, well, they committed to be with me. Say, do you know what? It doesn't really matter if I'm a bit absent. It doesn't really matter that we've not had a date in months. It doesn't really matter that I don't really listen when they're speaking to me.

Isn't it that you're one flesh? Work to remain so? Pray for soft hearts.

Some of you will be looking at verses 11 and 12. Anyone who divorces his wife and marries another or commits adultery against her, and if she divorces her husband and marries another man, she commits adultery against him. What's going on there? I think there are two things that are going on there. I think, firstly, this is a commentary on Herod and Herodias saying John was right in that instance to be calling that out.

But I think there's a deeper thing here, and it's that if we're going down that kind of burnt dinner line of disposable marriage, Jesus is sort of Saying, look, we can't kind of justify ourselves with that. You know, we can't say, oh, I did the right thing. I sent my wife off with her burnt dinner and a divorce certificate, so now I can go off for somebody. He's saying, no, it doesn't work like that. It's not disposable like that.

But you see, marriage is important, and marriage is deeply important because Jesus, in going back to Genesis, is doing something bigger. See, marriage is the relationship that God points to again and again and again to show his relationship with his people, his relationship with us. And contrary to what we like to think, we thought about it when we did the confession. We're not always that great. Our hearts are hard, aren't they?

In fact, in the book of Hosea in the Old Testament, God, he illustrates this and he says, look, I'm going to take one of my prophets and I'm going to get them to marry somebody who is unfaithful.

They get married and then they head off to the brothel, and they go there again and again and again. It's an illustration of how we are married to God, and yet our hearts, every single one of us. This is why there's no fault life, why there's no no fault life. Because every single one of us, although we worship God, we run off after other things. It's like spiritual adultery again and again and again with Hosea and Gomer.

Gomer not only is Gomer's the wife of Hosea, not only goes to the brothel, but goes there so often that she then begins to work there and gets entrapped in a system, a system that oppresses the vulnerable to a point where she is enslaved and at the point where she is of little value to the pimp she's sold.

And the Bible uses this as this graphic picture of the way that we run off after other gods become enslaved to them.

And Hosea is told to go down to the market. You can imagine what it would be like. There's Goma stood there, ashamed, people looking her up and down, going, okay, I'll take that one there. Half a shackle. Somebody else says, now, I'll give you two thirds of a shackle.

Maybe. Somebody says, yeah, I'll give a shackle for that one. You can imagine her surprise and shock when from the back of the crowd, somebody says, 200 shekels.

Is that my husband? Can it be? And Hosea buys back his wife as this illustration of a God who looks at us in all our spiritual unfaithfulness and he says, not what does the law say, but let me buy them back. This is couched in a time when three times Jesus is going to say, what does it cost me to buy you back? It costs me going to the cross and there I take your shame.

I pay my life so that you can have life. I pay the separation so that you can have unity. I pay the brokenness so that you can, you can have acceptance. I pay the cost to buy you back. You have a God who looks at us in all of our unfaithfulness and says, I am not going to divorce you.

I'm going to buy you back.

Say what? So for us today that means that we follow Jesus, and that's hard. It might mean that if we are married and it's hard, that we need to be working on our marriage, even though it would be easier to walk away. It might mean that we need to repent of places and times when we are not focused on our marriage.

But one thing is true for every single one of us. Whether our track record is somebody who is single or divorced or married or remarried or widow or widower, every single one of us has a husband in the Lord Jesus Christ who, though we are unfaithful to him, is faithful to us. And we must draw near to him today, even in the pain of the situation that we find ourselves in, especially in the pain of the situation that we find ourselves in, for he is faithful. I'm going to lead us in a prayer. We're then going to sing a song, Faithful one, speaking of that faithful God.

And we're actually going to sing two songs together. And I'd like us to actually stay seated for the first one. Just take it as time to think on what we've heard, to do business with the Lord, perhaps to think of areas where we're hard hearted, perhaps to run back to Him. We're going to do that for the first one and then we'll stand and sing. He will hold me fast before we come to the table and see again what it means to have a faithful God who pursues us even in our own faithfulness.

Heavenly Father, I pray. I pray for any of those who are here today for whom marriage is abusive. I pray that they will pick up the phone or speak to somebody. Even today, I pray for those for whom marriage is hard. Perhaps it feels like we're heading towards divorce and this is a hard message.

I pray that by your spirit you would comfort us and help us to focus on our own hearts. I pray for those for whom divorce is part of our story. And we are remarried. I pray against any undue guilt. I pray that we would know the love of Christ.

And I pray that we would commit to to our husband or wife today. I pray for those of us who are married. I pray the same that we would be those who work on hard hearts. Help us to maintain that one flesh union. And I pray for all of us.

Father, in all the filth of our sin would we delight in our bridegroom, Jesus, who pays the price for us. Thank you. That though we are unfaithful, you are faithful.

Amen.