In Mark 10, Jesus lays out God’s plan for marriage. It comes
in response to a question the Pharisees bring about divorce. We know from other
episodes that this was probably not in good faith, but a pretense to trap him
in something he would say. Mark says that they were testing him. They ask him,
“Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?”
Jesus responds as he usually does, by pointing to the
scripture. He asks them what Moses said. The Jews considered Moses the most
authoritative voice about the things of God. This is a good place to consider
authority. What has authority in your life? What decides how you live? What
determines your path? What shapes your worldview?
For Christians, the bible has authority over our lives. Because
the bible is the inspired word of God. We cannot consider ourselves disciples
(or followers of Jesus) unless we are willing to let the word of God shape our
lives. Jesus said, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments” (John
14:15). We have determined to live our lives for God. Remember Jesus said only
shortly before this episode that we must lay down our lives to follow him. He must
become the Lord of our lives, not just in name, but in truth.
This must be absolutely settled in your heart. Because it is
going to be tested. There will come a time when you must choose between follow
Jesus and going your own way. He will not accept you sitting on the fence. He
will not accept you following him some of the time, and the rest of the time
going your own way. He will not allow you to pick and choose which of His
directives you will follow. There can’t be partial surrender.
I cannot emphasize this enough. I want you to understand
that you can’t pick and choose which things you are going to follow God about. We
saw last week that the kingdom of God is upside down. It is counter cultural.
He teaches things that are not popular. By being a disciple, you are going to
be going against the crowd most of the time. It’s not easy, but it is the only
way to follow him.
If you won’t accept his authority, you are not his disciple.
So, Jesus references the scriptures. He derives his
authority from the revealed word of God. “What does Moses command?” The
Pharisees answer by quoting Deuteronomy 24: Moses permitted a man to write a
certificate of divorce.
But this is a matter of the heart. Jesus said Moses
permitted divorce “because of the hardness of your hearts…” But this was not
God’s plan. Jesus lays out God’s plan for marriage.
“But from the beginning ‘God created them male and female.”
Jesus explains that marriage is something that came from
God. It is His institution. He started it in the beginning with Adam and Eve. When
he created humans, he created marriage. He has the authority to say how it is
to be done. And Jesus ‘s way is not the way of the world. Now we are going to
get a taste of this “laying down our lives”.
“God created them male and female.”
Today this is highly controversial. According to Jesus, God
did not create 32 genders. He made them male and female. He designed marriage
to be between one man and one woman. No other circumstances will fulfill His
directive. Jesus is claiming that is both natural and God’s plan that marriage
should be between one man and one woman. Hetreosexual, gender binary. These are
the teachings of Jesus.
Verse 7: “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother
and hold fast to his wife, and they shall be one flesh’. So they are no longer
two but one flesh.”
Jesus establishes the family unit here. It is often called
the nuclear family. It is God’s design. The man is to hold fast to his wife.
This involves commitment. A relationship cannot be built without commitment.
God did not make us to sleep around, to go from one partner to the next.
Let’s look at 1 Corinthians chapter 6 verse 9. I don’t want to put too fine a point on it,
but I feel that we need to be clear about what the bible teaches, especially in
the confused culture we live in. We talked about the kingdom of God last week. You
are either in the kingdom of God or the kingdom of darkness. Here it says: the
unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God. Paul lists what it is to be
unrighteous. Sexual immorality and adultery are on the list.
Paul goes on to discuss how we should not use the grace and
freedom that God has bought for us to indulge in sin. The body is not meant to
sexual immorality. God designed it for marriage. Because ultimately, he
designed us for communion with Him. This life, these relationships, marriage,
is for a lifetime; “until death do us part”. But we will spend eternity in
communion with him. In fact, marriage is a symbol for the ultimate communion
that is to come. The church is called the “bride” of Christ. Here Paul speaks
of us as the body of Christ. We are one in spirit with him.
Then he describes how wrong sexual immorality is. You are already
one Spirit with the Lord, now you are going to take your body and make it one
flesh with someone else. Paul says we are like a temple that the Holy Spirit
comes to dwell in. And we would take His temple and give it to another? It
would defile his temple. We are taking what was set aside to be holy and
desecrating it. Making it filthy.
Do you see God’s heart here? He is not trying to deny you
fun or take away anything good from you. He has reserved the greatest, most
fulfilling relationship for us. Our earthly relationships are just a shadow of
it.
C. S. Lewis once said, “It would seem that Our Lord finds
our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures fooling
about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered to us, like
an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he
cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far
too easily pleased.” 1
He made us for love. He made us for him. He created sex and
he created it to be kept within the bounds of lifelong commitment to one
person, our husband or wife. And this relationship is meant to be sealed with a
covenant.
A covenant is a vow before God and witnesses that you will
hold fast to your wife. This is where marriage begins.
I need to say a couple things because of the culture we live
in. Your fiancé is not your wife. An engagement is not a wedding. There is no
vow in place. It is very easy to rationalize and say, we are getting married,
we are practically married, but you are not. Marriage means something. It is a covenant
between you and God, that he designed to build a family under.
Verse 8: “What therefore God has joined together, let not
man separate.”
References
1.
Lewis, C. S. (1949), The weight of glory: And
other essays. New York: Macmillan.
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