Heaven's Point of View

Matthew 19:3-12, Part 3

Three Angels Broadcasting Network

Program transcript

Participants: Yvonne Lewis (Host), Tom Shepherd

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Series Code: HPOV

Program Code: HPOV000044A


00:16 Hello and welcome to Heaven's Point of View.
00:18 My name is Dr. Yvonne Lewis and I have the privilege
00:21 of co-hosting this Series of Love, Marriage, Sex, and Divorce
00:27 from the New Testament perspective
00:29 with Dr. Tom Sheperd
00:32 and Dr. Sheperd is a Professor of New Testament Interpretation
00:36 at Andrews University
00:37 and the Director of their Ph. D. and Th. D. religion programs
00:42 so, thank you so much Dr. Sheperd
00:45 for what you've been giving us in this Series...
00:47 Tom: All right.
00:48 We have some very interesting
00:50 information today too, as well, to share.
00:54 So, last time, we ended up with Matthew 19:9
00:58 and we were talking about that,
00:59 where Jesus talked about hard hearts and hardened hearts
01:04 can you just kind of expand on that a little bit?
01:07 Okay, well, we noticed that the Religious Leaders of Jesus' day
01:12 were using the Old Testament "Case Law"
01:15 to make rulings allowing them to divorce their wives
01:19 for a whole, wide variety of reasons
01:22 and they came to Jesus to see what He thought about the matter
01:27 and we found that the Case Law
01:30 was found in Deuteronomy 24 verses 1 to 4,
01:34 we've looked at that already and it was actually
01:38 that Case Law back in Deuteronomy...
01:40 was designed to protect women. Yvonne: Hmmm...
01:42 Not to abuse them as the Law had been twisted to mean,
01:46 now, in Jesus day, they were using this to...
01:49 to actually go the opposite direction of what Deuteronomy
01:53 has been built for,
01:55 Deuteronomy was there to protect women
01:58 and what happened by Jesus' day was
02:00 they were using Deuteronomy's Law as... like an excuse
02:04 for divorcing their wives for almost any reason at all
02:07 according to one of the Schools of Thought in Jesus' day
02:10 so, Jesus restored the Command to its original intent
02:13 and He pointed back further to Creation
02:17 so, what I'd like to do is...
02:19 is to go back and read the whole passage,
02:21 it's always good to just refresh and see where we've been
02:24 and maybe somebody hasn't seen the whole Presentation
02:27 so we hear the whole passage and get it in context.
02:29 Right. Matthew 19 verses 3 through 12.
02:32 Verses 3 through 12,
02:34 "The Pharisees also came to Him,
02:36 testing Him and saying to Him,
02:38 'Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife
02:40 for just any reason?' and He answered and said to them
02:44 'Have you not read that He who made them at the beginning
02:47 made them male and female and said: for this reason
02:51 a man shall leave his father and mother
02:53 and be joined to his wife
02:55 and the two shall become one flesh
02:57 so then, they are no longer two but one flesh
03:01 therefore, what God has joined together,
03:03 let not man separate. '
03:05 They said to Him, 'Why then did Moses command
03:08 to give a certificate of divorce and to put her away?'
03:11 He said to them,
03:13 'Moses, because of the hardness of your hearts,
03:16 permitted you to divorce your wives,
03:18 but from the beginning it was not so.
03:21 And I say to you, whoever divorces his wife,
03:24 except for sexual immorality, and marries another,
03:28 commits adultery: and whoever marries her
03:31 who is divorced commits adultery. '
03:33 His disciples said to Him,
03:34 'If such is the case of the man with his wife,
03:38 it is better not to marry. '
03:39 But He said to them, 'All cannot accept this saying,
03:43 but only those to whom it has been given.
03:45 For there are eunuchs
03:47 who were born thus from their mother's womb,
03:49 and there are eunuchs who were made eunuchs by men,
03:52 and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs
03:55 for the kingdom of heaven's sake.
03:56 He who is able to accept it, let him accept it. '"
04:00 Okay, well the last section... maybe we'll have a few minutes
04:03 at the end... we can just talk about that a little bit.
04:05 I'd like a little clarification on that myself.
04:08 But right now, we are focusing in on...
04:11 around verses 8 and 9 to take a look at them
04:15 and we need to kind of unpack this pretty carefully
04:18 because there are a lot of questions that people will raise
04:21 about what Jesus has said.
04:24 The Pharisees had asked Him
04:26 whether it was okay to divorce your wife for any cause
04:29 and that really was linked into Deuteronomy 24
04:34 as we noted before
04:35 and their particular interpretation of it,
04:38 Jesus had taken and said, "Well now, you need to look back
04:42 to God's plan in Creation,
04:43 and the Creation pattern was one man and one woman
04:47 and that... the man leaves his father and mother
04:51 and is joined to his wife... the two become one flesh.
04:53 He says, "What God has joined together,
04:56 let not man separate. "
04:58 So, you're not supposed to divide up...
04:59 you're supposed to stay together,
05:01 just like we said from Deuteronomy...
05:03 I'm sorry, not Deuteronomy but from Malachi...
05:06 God says, "I hate divorce,"
05:07 okay, so then this brings them to their question
05:11 in response to Him, they say,
05:13 "Well, but then why did Moses command us
05:15 to give a Certificate of Divorce?"
05:18 And the perceptive reader will notice that Jesus says,
05:22 "Well it was because of the hardness of your heart
05:27 that Moses allowed you to divorce... "
05:29 so he permitted it, it wasn't a command.
05:32 Right and so, there was no real command for divorce.
05:35 Correct, in fact, throughout the Bible,
05:37 there is no command to divorce,
05:41 we noted that there are two different kinds of Law
05:44 one is called "Apodictic" that's a great word,
05:47 Apodictic Law. Yvonne: It has a ring to it.
05:50 And it has a ring to it, the other one is Case Law.
05:52 Apodictic Law is a law that applies to everybody
05:54 in all situations,
05:56 so, this is like the Ten Commandments.
05:57 Yvonne: Okay.
05:59 "Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy... "
06:00 "Don't commit adultery," "Don't steal,"
06:01 those things apply to everybody at all times in all situations
06:05 then you have things that are Case Law,
06:08 Let's say, "Well, if a man's ox
06:10 breaks down his neighbor's fence and goes and eats his corn,
06:16 then you should do this. " Yvonne: Right.
06:18 Right, so that's a particular
06:20 case situation that deals with it.
06:23 Right, specifically targeting certain situations.
06:26 Yeah, certain situations... so we've said that there is no
06:28 command in Apodictic Law in the Bible to divorce,
06:33 it's an important concept,
06:35 there's knowing these overall things... because, why?
06:38 Because divorce is not God's plan
06:41 for all marriages. Hmmm...
06:43 You see, He says,
06:44 "Don't commit adultery," that's Apodictic Law,
06:46 but there's only "Case Law"
06:48 that deals with the question of divorce,
06:49 so, Deuteronomy 24, actually, assumes the presence of divorce
06:56 and then it makes a Law
07:01 in order to control the bad situations that result from it.
07:05 Hmmm...
07:06 Okay, it's not there to say that divorce is okay,
07:09 it's there to minimize the bad effects of divorce
07:13 that were already present in their Society.
07:15 It's like we say in Christian Theology
07:19 what is needed is not a change of partner,
07:22 what is needed is a change of heart.
07:25 Hmmm...
07:26 And so, our hearts need to be converted
07:28 and you can learn to love, you can learn to love again,
07:33 if you fell into love or you make a choice about love
07:38 and then you came to the place
07:39 where you didn't love your spouse anymore,
07:41 you can learn to love again.
07:43 And you know, it's an interesting point,
07:45 Dr. Sheperd... because, sometimes you hear a spouse say,
07:48 "Well, I just don't love my husband or my wife anymore,
07:52 I just don't feel that anymore"
07:54 and what you're saying is, "You can... "
07:57 well, I hear you saying a few things... number one,
07:59 you can get that again,
08:01 if you had it before, you can have it again.
08:03 Tom: Yes. Yvonne: And it is a choice.
08:05 It is a choice, yeah, love is a choice
08:07 and remember we talked about... before...
08:09 sometime back in these programs
08:11 about the meaning of how the Bible
08:12 uses the term "love"
08:14 when it says... "to love God with all your heart,
08:15 to love your neighbor as yourself. "
08:17 Those were not just romantic...
08:20 those were not romantic kinds of concepts,
08:22 now, some people will say,
08:24 "Yeah, but, marriage is supposed to be all... all romantic,"
08:28 well, it's romantic but there's more than the romance
08:32 you know, there's a certain
08:33 choice you make
08:35 to affirm and to support
08:37 and to bless the other person around you.
08:39 So, we should note that in this whole dispute with Jesus,
08:45 there were two different schools of thought
08:47 that we talked about,
08:49 the School of Hillel and the School of Shammai,
08:51 these were schools of thought
08:54 among the religious leaders of Jesus' day,
08:56 and the School of Hillel said that
09:00 they would let you have divorce for almost any reason,
09:03 you could burn the toast and you could get a divorce,
09:05 the School of Shammai said,
09:06 "Only for sexual immorality. "
09:08 Now we might suppose that what would happen is
09:11 there'd be a lot more people flocking to the School of Hillel
09:14 and getting divorces because they were unhappy.
09:17 But what happened was the School of Hillel...
09:21 they lengthened the process for getting a divorce
09:25 which made it harder to do,
09:29 where the process was more simple in the School of Shammai
09:32 because their standard was higher,
09:34 so the two schools that are...
09:35 Yvonne: Pro's and cons...
09:38 You cannot destroy marriages
09:41 and expect the Society to stay healthy.
09:44 That's very true.
09:47 And we in America... and we in the church in America
09:51 of all people need to understand this
09:54 and we need to help make changes about this
09:57 because our Society
09:59 is having more and more trouble with this.
10:01 All right, now, this brings us to verse 9,
10:03 so let's read verse 9 one more time.
10:05 Okay, verse 9 says, "And I say to you
10:07 whoever divorces his wife except for sexual immorality
10:10 and marries another commits adultery
10:13 and whoever marries her who is divorced
10:15 commits adultery. "
10:16 All right now, this statement of Jesus,
10:20 people study it and study it and study it,
10:24 and they parse it and pull it apart
10:27 but we're going to talk about
10:29 some of that kind of relationship
10:32 but let's just focus in on the basic compounds and make sure
10:36 we get the basic message.
10:37 If you divorce... and then... except for sexual immorality
10:41 and marry another, that's the same as adultery,
10:43 Jesus had a formula you might say,
10:46 divorce plus remarriage equals adultery...
10:50 Hmmm...
10:52 Unless there's sexual immorality involved.
10:55 Now exactly what does He mean
10:57 when he uses this term?
10:58 Sexual immorality or porneia,
11:01 we'll have to unpack that a little bit.
11:05 But Jesus is very much against divorce
11:08 now, is it the same as adultery to just get divorced?
11:13 No, the answer is no, a person who has divorced
11:20 it's a tragedy, it's a tragic situation
11:23 but it is not adultery, so they haven't like... broken
11:26 one of the Ten Commandments when they do that.
11:28 Now, we have a tendency... I don't know why it is...
11:31 but we have a tendency... as humans
11:33 to look down on people who have been divorced.
11:35 Hmmm... hmmm...
11:36 And sometimes the divorce happens
11:38 because of no fault of their own... does it occur
11:41 the other person just... went off and just did...
11:45 and just departed and just created a situation
11:49 that caused great heartache in their home.
11:51 They didn't want that, but we always tend to look
11:54 and say, "Well, but they are probably to blame"
11:57 you know, and we in the church need to step back and say,
12:00 "You know what? It doesn't matter what happened
12:03 we got to love them, we got to care for them,
12:05 we got to support them. "
12:06 Now if they need to commit you know,
12:09 if they need to repent of their sin and say,
12:12 "I did something wrong," they need to confess that
12:15 that's part of Christian life as well.
12:17 All right, but Jesus' statement here,
12:19 "Divorce by itself is not described as adultery,
12:22 divorce is not the will of God,
12:25 but if one remains single afterwards
12:27 it does not call for censure by the Community of Faith. "
12:29 It seems divorce is its own censure.
12:33 That is very true, after divorce, many times,
12:36 you find that people kind of tend to take sides.
12:39 They do.
12:41 And then if you had friends as a couple
12:43 prior to your divorce, then who becomes...
12:46 who's still your friend and who's not.
12:48 Tom: Yeah. Yvonne: So people...
12:49 it is its own censure.
12:51 Tom: Yeah, yeah. Yvonne: That's true.
12:52 Okay, so now we've got to walk through a little bit
12:55 about what goes on here and press forward,
12:58 sometimes... sometimes... not always...
13:01 sometimes to remarry after divorce,
13:05 is the same as committing adultery.
13:08 Okay, why would that be?
13:11 Probably because the first marriage was not dissolved
13:15 in a court and through the will of God
13:16 and thus, to remarry would be
13:18 the same as committing adultery against the first spouse.
13:21 Hmmm...
13:22 Okay, so, you know, we have to think about this,
13:25 now, there's a linkage here to Deuteronomy 24,
13:28 Jesus' statement does not affirm divorce in the Torah
13:32 we've already noted...
13:34 there are no Apodictic divorce laws
13:36 and it wasn't God's will for them to divorce
13:39 and so, Deuteronomy 24
13:41 limited the damage that was there.
13:44 Now, when we come to Jesus' "exception clause,"
13:47 He says, "Except for the case of porneia or sexual immorality"
13:53 what does He mean? okay...
13:55 Sexual immorality... this term was a bit of a
14:00 flexible term, it could mean, having sexual intercourse
14:03 with somebody who's not your spouse,
14:04 okay, in general, it could also mean incest,
14:08 having sex with a child in your family,
14:11 sex with a prostitute...
14:12 is the way the term is used sometimes... porneia...
14:15 okay, the question is,
14:16 what is the meaning here in Matthew 19?
14:20 The linkage to Deuteronomy 24,
14:23 in the context of the Pharisees' question to Jesus,
14:26 is helpful in this regard, okay?
14:29 Their question arose from the debate between the two schools
14:32 of Hillel and Shammai.
14:35 Now, they were both looking at the same Old Testament text.
14:38 Yvonne: Right. Tom: Deuteronomy 24.
14:40 And they came across a phrase that we translate as
14:45 "a matter of indecency" a matter of indecency...
14:50 okay, now the two different schools
14:53 focused on the two different terms.
14:56 The School of Hillel focused on the term, "matter,"
15:00 "matter of indecency"
15:03 so they said, you could divorce for any cause,
15:06 it's a matter of indecency... matter...
15:09 the School of Shammai focused on the word, "indecency"
15:12 it's a matter of indecency, okay, it's kind of...
15:16 put it in colloquial terms
15:18 or kind of terms that are easier to understand.
15:22 So they focused on...
15:23 one focused on the word "matter"
15:25 the other focused on the word, "indecency. "
15:27 That Matthew has the term, "porneia" would suggest
15:32 that Jesus comes down, actually, on the School of Shammai's side
15:36 that is... it's the... "a matter of indecency"
15:39 that porneia is the indecency which is...
15:41 the sexual immorality
15:42 has some kind of sexual evil involved here
15:46 where somebody has done something sexually wrong
15:49 so, the question is
15:52 what does Jesus affirm here? Right?
15:55 He says that marriage has a divine component,
15:59 right, it is not simply a contract
16:02 between a man and a woman, it is a link to God.
16:07 God is the one who affirms a marriage when it takes place.
16:11 So, it's not just a contract between people.
16:14 So, it has this divine component.
16:16 Jesus acknowledges the shift that took place under Moses,
16:20 He said that he permitted this, it wasn't something he commanded
16:24 it wasn't God's will but it was because of hard hearts
16:27 that this took place.
16:29 That cannot be God's ideal. Hmmm...
16:33 God doesn't want hard hearts, God wants changed hearts.
16:35 Right. Right...
16:37 He calls people back to Creation order,
16:41 He says that from the beginning it wasn't that way
16:44 and he calls them back to live as God wanted them.
16:48 But then He has this exception,
16:50 it's the allowance for a release from a marriage commitment
16:52 based on gross moral failure.
16:55 So, He's not doing it for light matters like Hillel,
16:58 it has to be something serious okay... that is taking place.
17:01 Now, this actually is also not a command,
17:04 that's very important to notice.
17:05 He doesn't say, "You have to get divorced
17:08 if your spouse has been sleeping with somebody else. "
17:11 He doesn't say, "You have to get that,"
17:14 He says, "You can but you do not have to. "
17:16 Sexual sin can be forgiven, divorce is not required
17:21 but it is allowed on these grounds.
17:24 If the "hard-hearted" refers to the person
17:26 who committed adultery,
17:28 then the release given to the innocent party
17:32 is justice in the face of sinful defiance.
17:36 Somebody who will not change, they will not repent, okay.
17:40 So that is... if you're in a marriage
17:43 with someone that is a serial adulterer
17:45 and you keep saying,
17:46 "Look, I can't deal with this anymore"
17:48 and the person just continues on,
17:52 then, you do have Biblical grounds...
17:54 to divorce. Tom: Yes, to divorce.
17:56 Yeah, right, so, if the hard-hearted is actually
17:59 the innocent party, some people take it that way
18:01 that it is the innocent party, calling them to forgive
18:04 then Jesus' command goes even beyond the School of Shammai
18:07 where they say it is a command to divorce such people
18:11 when they commit adultery and you divorce them.
18:13 Jesus indicates that while that is permitted,
18:15 that that was not God's original idea
18:18 and He wants healing and it is the innocent party
18:20 who has the ability, by the grace of God,
18:22 to actually bring healing by forgiving the offender.
18:26 Of course, if the offender doesn't repent,
18:29 there's an interesting thing
18:33 that we can stop and mention here
18:34 and that's the issue of forgiveness.
18:36 Hmmm...
18:37 Forgiveness sets us free
18:41 from the control of the sin
18:44 that has come into our life or into the life of other people.
18:48 If that person still isn't repentant,
18:52 if you forgive them,
18:54 it sets you free from their control in your life.
18:58 That's right.
18:59 Yeah and it's a deep topic, it's a deep thought
19:03 but it's a hard thought, I've seen that...
19:08 I have seen that to forgive somebody
19:10 when they've really done you really wrong, now, you know,
19:13 if they just did some minor... small thing, that's like nothing
19:16 but, I mean, if they really did something really terrible to you
19:19 and they don't... they're not sorry for it...
19:23 that's the hardest situation but if you forgive them
19:27 and you're saying...
19:30 you're recognizing that it's wrong
19:32 because you don't forgive something that's not wrong...
19:34 Hmmm... hmmm...
19:36 you're recognizing that it's wrong
19:37 but you're actually giving it over to God
19:39 and letting Him take care of your life.
19:40 This is so important in so many aspects of life.
19:44 It is because it holds you in its grip,
19:49 if you don't forgive... the anger and all that
19:53 holds you in its grip and it has power and control over you
19:57 but once you release it and you give it to the Lord
20:00 and you ask the Lord to give you a spirit of forgiveness,
20:03 it sets you free. Tom: That's right.
20:05 It's really not so much for the other person... it's for you.
20:09 And what I've discovered is
20:11 that when they've done you wrong really badly wrong,
20:14 you have to forgive them over and over again.
20:18 Hmmm... hmmm...
20:19 You know, Jesus one time said to Peter that your...
20:22 Peter said, "How many times should I forgive my brother,
20:24 if he sins against me, up to 7 times?"
20:26 And Jesus said, "No, Seventy times seven... "
20:28 And we say, "Well, that's just like...
20:29 don't stop... stop counting... " kind of a thing
20:32 well, I've kind of discovered a new meaning for that
20:34 it's like, sometimes when somebody
20:37 has really done you wrong,
20:38 you have to forgive them 490 times
20:40 for it to sink in to in your own life... in your own heart...
20:43 you know, to kind of settle into you,
20:45 that you say, "Yeah, I don't... you know... I have forgiven"
20:49 and that's by the grace of God but it's something
20:52 you sort of... go over and over and over again,
20:55 and this kind of hurts...
20:57 it can really take a long time to heal.
21:00 And again, we in the church
21:02 should be thoughtful of such things.
21:07 All right, now, this exception clause
21:11 is rather challenging sometimes
21:15 it's kind of expressed in several different ways
21:18 and some people wonder "what does it really refer to. "
21:21 A man who marries an invalidly divorced woman commits adultery.
21:26 If you follow the same passage in Luke 16
21:30 or you look at Matthew 5 you see this.
21:34 Anyone in Jewish Society would agree with this position,
21:36 in fact in Judaism,
21:38 if a woman accidently married two men,
21:40 she was treated as an adulteress
21:42 even if the fault were not hers.
21:44 Yvonne: Wow! Tom: Which doesn't seem right
21:46 but that was the kind of thing...
21:48 so a man who married an invalid divorced woman commits adultery,
21:51 a man who invalidly divorces his wife,
21:54 causes her to commit adultery,
21:56 there seems to be a nuance of that in Matthew 5
21:58 and again in Matthew 19.
22:00 In Matthew 5, if the woman remarries
22:04 and thereby commits adultery,
22:06 then her former husband seems to be... partly to blame
22:08 because he shouldn't have divorced her in the first place.
22:10 Right... right... hmmm... hmmm...
22:12 another way of looking at this exception clause
22:16 has to do with the idea
22:18 that a man who invalidly divorces his wife
22:21 and marries another commits adultery.
22:24 This kind of turns it in the other direction
22:26 and in Mark chapter 10 and Matthew 19 and Luke 16...
22:29 all seem to have some of that kind of flavor.
22:31 What I'm doing here is I'm...
22:32 I'm actually talking about comparing the different ways
22:35 that Jesus talks about divorce in the Synoptic gospels.
22:37 Yvonne: Right.
22:39 Sometimes people worry about that... that you know,
22:41 it's not exactly the same words here than it is there
22:44 but actually, if you were to take people into Court
22:47 you know, four witnesses into Court,
22:49 and they all said exactly the same thing
22:51 about an accident,
22:53 you would say, "I think they were outside
22:56 talking together and making the story up. "
22:59 Right...
23:01 But when we come to the four gospels
23:02 and we find that they say things not quite exactly the same
23:05 it doesn't exactly match, we say, "oooh... oooh... no... "
23:08 but we can't trust the Bible then... really?
23:11 It should make us trust it more.
23:12 Hmmm...
23:14 Because it's not exactly the same...
23:15 they don't exactly match, it's more like four witnesses
23:19 that are presenting the information, okay,
23:22 so, over in Mark and in Luke, even in Matthew 19,
23:27 "A man who invalidly divorces his wife,"
23:29 so, he's at fault now,
23:31 "and marries another... commits adultery"
23:33 for Jews this would be difficult to accept actually
23:36 because in Jesus' day, it was technically impossible
23:39 for a man to commit adultery by marrying an unmarried woman
23:44 because polygamy was allowed, that also wasn't God's idea.
23:47 Right... right...
23:48 But that's somewhat what could happen,
23:51 but Jesus taught that marriage should be monogamous.
23:55 He puts together the text from Genesis 1 and 2
23:58 and He says, "Male and female and the two become one flesh"
24:01 so since... for Jesus... there's only monogamy
24:04 in an invalid divorce followed by a remarriage
24:07 it would be adultery against the first and only wife,
24:09 all right, now, there's another case
24:12 if you look at Mark 10,
24:13 a woman who invalidly divorces her husband
24:15 and marries another commits adultery.
24:17 This is just saying now it's the woman who is doing the divorce.
24:19 Right... right...
24:21 Now, some people will want to say that
24:22 "Ah, well, Mark must have made this up
24:24 because in Jesus' day
24:25 women couldn't divorce their husbands in Judaism,"
24:30 well, you know what?
24:31 If you look in the gospels
24:34 you will find a lady named Herodias.
24:36 Hmmm...
24:37 She was married to a guy named Philip
24:39 and then she divorces her husband, Philip,
24:43 and she marries Herod... Yvonne: Right...
24:46 And, obviously, that took place in the context of Palestine,
24:52 all right, so, the Herodian women actually did this
24:55 all right, so, when Jesus says,
24:57 "a woman who invalidly divorces her husband
24:59 and marries another and commits adultery... "
25:01 He might be winking and saying,
25:02 "Ah yeah, don't forget that Herodias did that, okay. "
25:05 Now, the exception clause is really the clue
25:13 to why Jesus said that divorce is invalid
25:15 when somebody does this,
25:18 Matthew 5 and 19 have the exception clause
25:20 Mark 10 and Luke do not... Yvonne: Hmmm...
25:23 Now people wonder about that, well, why not?
25:26 In the first century, in the Jewish setting
25:29 of discussing divorce
25:30 the question about the School of Hillel
25:31 and the School of Shammai
25:33 would have been the matter of discussion
25:35 they would've been saying about when they talked about divorce,
25:37 so, the new Hillel ruling that you could divorce your wife
25:41 for any cause, okay,
25:43 did not require any valid grounds
25:46 for the divorce and allowed divorce for any reason
25:49 therefore, when contemporary Jews heard the question,
25:51 "Is it lawful to divorce your wife?"
25:53 They would have mentally added the words,
25:57 "for any reason... "
25:59 because that's what Hillel was talking about.
26:02 Similarly, when they heard the reply,
26:04 "Whoever divorces his wife... "
26:05 they would have mentally added the phrase,
26:08 "except for valid grounds. "
26:10 It's not unlike reading Matthew 5
26:15 when Jesus... we talked about this before...
26:17 "looking at a woman lustfully and everything,"
26:19 okay, "I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman
26:22 with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her
26:25 in his heart... " the missing implied phrase is,
26:27 "except for his own wife," Yvonne: Right.
26:29 It's all right to look at your wife that way.
26:31 Right.
26:32 You know, in fact, we used to tell...
26:34 "it's encouraged," so, from our previous thoughts
26:38 we can say, "Jesus calls divorce... invalid
26:40 if and when there are no valid grounds,"
26:42 but what does that mean?
26:44 The contextual meaning... and we're running out of time...
26:49 the contextual meaning of this...
26:51 we can just kind of summarize in this way
26:53 since we're short on time,
26:55 Jesus taught that marriage is for life.
26:56 Hmmm... hmmm...
26:58 He opposed divorce
26:59 but he taught that there are valid
27:01 and invalid reasons for divorce.
27:04 The valid reasons are in the case of...
27:06 when somebody is sexually...
27:09 has sex with somebody other than their spouse.
27:12 Sex with someone other than the spouse
27:14 permits... but does not require divorce.
27:16 Divorce for invalid reasons
27:18 plus remarriage is the same as adultery.
27:22 And that really... basically summarizes
27:26 what He's saying in Matthew 19.
27:27 Yeah.
27:29 It is critical for us to really study this
27:32 and ask for the Holy Spirit's guidance on it
27:36 because so many people are contemplating divorce
27:39 and before doing it, really... we need to...
27:42 really get in the Word,
27:43 I know, because I've been divorced
27:46 and it's not an easy journey.
27:49 Well, for those of you
27:51 who are married and contemplating divorce,
27:54 get into the Word and tune in next time
27:58 as we continue to unpack these wonderful topics
28:01 and from our Word.


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Revised 2016-04-21