Matthew 5:33-37

³³ “Again you have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not swear falsely, but shall perform to the Lord what you have sworn.’ ³⁴ But I say to you, Do not take an oath at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God, ³⁵ or by the earth, for it is his footstool, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King. ³⁶ And do not take an oath by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or black. ³⁷ Let what you say be simply ‘Yes’ or ‘No’; anything more than this comes from evil.

In his book, Culture Shift, Al Mohler points to a report showing “that some half million Americans hold jobs they attained with spurious qualifications” and “that an investigation conducted by the General Accounting Office once revealed twenty-eight senior federal officials who did not actually hold the college degrees they claimed.”[1]  In other words, an alarming number of Americans have the jobs they have because they lied to get them.

Apparently, there are temporal benefits to a strategic lie that are too much for many folks to pass up.  In his novel, Catch-22, Joseph Heller writes about Major Major’s first experience with telling a lie.

Major Major had lied, and it was good.  He was not really surprised that it was good, for he had observed that people who did lie were, on the whole, more resourceful and ambitious and successful than people who did not lie.[2]

Maybe there’s something to that.  Maybe you can “get ahead” by lying.  If so, it’s only temporary, for our sins eventually catch up with us, even if it’s at the throne of God.  But oftentimes they catch up with us well before the throne of God.  In fact, lying usually unleashes an inexhaustible need for continuous lying.  In William Faulkner’s novel, The Reivers, Lucius Priest makes the following commitment not to lie anymore:

I said, and I believed it…I will never lie again.  It’s too much trouble.  It’s too much like trying to prop a feather upright in a saucer of sand.  There’s never any end to it.  You never get any rest.  You’re never finished.  You never even use up the sand so that you can quit trying.[3]

Yes, it is a serious thing to lie.  Lying empties our words of authentic meaning and reduces them to mere verbal impostures.  More generally, we can also say that it is a serious thing when our words lose weight, or when we distort the words we use for selfish means.  Jesus’ words at this point in the Sermon on the Mount are about our words and the ways we distort them or make them weightless for selfish gain.

I. What is in your heart will eventually come out in your speech.

Behind this teaching is a fundamental biblical truth:  what is in your heart will eventually come out in your speech.  In Matthew 15, Jesus said something that offended the Pharisees.

¹⁰ And he called the people to him and said to them, “Hear and understand: ¹¹ it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but what comes out of the mouth; this defiles a person.” ¹² Then the disciples came and said to him, “Do you know that the Pharisees were offended when they heard this saying?” ¹³ He answered, “Every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted will be rooted up. ¹⁴ Let them alone; they are blind guides. And if the blind lead the blind, both will fall into a pit.” ¹⁵ But Peter said to him, “Explain the parable to us.” ¹⁶ And he said, “Are you also still without understanding? ¹⁷ Do you not see that whatever goes into the mouth passes into the stomach and is expelled? ¹⁸ But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this defiles a person. ¹⁹ For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander. ²⁰ These are what defile a person. But to eat with unwashed hands does not defile anyone.”

Yes, we are defiled by our mouths.  More accurately, we are defiled as our mouths reveal what is in our hearts:  “what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this defiles a person.”  There is a connection between the mouth and the heart.  Your words reveal who you are.  Your mouth is the window to your soul.  This is a daunting thought, for, as James said in James 3, what our tongues reveal about us is not flattering in the least!

¹ Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness. ² For we all stumble in many ways. And if anyone does not stumble in what he says, he is a perfect man, able also to bridle his whole body. ³ If we put bits into the mouths of horses so that they obey us, we guide their whole bodies as well. ⁴ Look at the ships also: though they are so large and are driven by strong winds, they are guided by a very small rudder wherever the will of the pilot directs. ⁵ So also the tongue is a small member, yet it boasts of great things. How great a forest is set ablaze by such a small fire! ⁶ And the tongue is a fire, a world of unrighteousness. The tongue is set among our members, staining the whole body, setting on fire the entire course of life, and set on fire by hell. ⁷ For every kind of beast and bird, of reptile and sea creature, can be tamed and has been tamed by mankind, ⁸ but no human being can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison. ⁹ With it we bless our Lord and Father, and with it we curse people who are made in the likeness of God. ¹⁰ From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brothers, these things ought not to be so. ¹¹ Does a spring pour forth from the same opening both fresh and salt water? ¹² Can a fig tree, my brothers, bear olives, or a grapevine produce figs? Neither can a salt pond yield fresh water.

When James says that the tongue “is a restless evil, full of deadly poison,” what he is really saying is that our tongues reveal the restless evil and deadly poison that has taken root in our hearts.  Put another way, empty speech, filthy speech, dishonest speech, and showy speech demonstrate that our hearts have yet to be fully taken over by Jesus, that we have not yet let Him possess all that we are.

This is the problem with our winking and giggling at profanity, for example.  It is interesting to note the sins we harp on and the sins we excuse.  We rail against abortion and homosexuality.  Are these sins?  Yes, to be sure.  Should we speak against them?  Yes, to be sure.  But what of the “acceptable” sins we view as lesser?  What about profanity?

Do you realize that when a man claims to be a child of God and swears, what he is really saying is that the Lord Jesus does not fully occupy his heart.  It reveals a divided heart!  “From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brothers, these things ought not to be so” (James 3:10).  We should grieve over that.  We should mourn over that, in others and in ourselves.  Our speech reveals our hearts.

II. A heart governed by Jesus will result in pure language that does not need the aid of supporting oaths and reassurances.

If the reality of our hearts manifests itself in our speech, that means that a heart governed by Jesus must result in pure language that does not need the aid of supporting oaths and reassurances.  This fact helps us understand what Jesus is doing in this section.

³³ “Again you have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not swear falsely, but shall perform to the Lord what you have sworn.’ ³⁴ But I say to you, Do not take an oath at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God, ³⁵ or by the earth, for it is his footstool, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King. ³⁶ And do not take an oath by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or black. ³⁷ Let what you say be simply ‘Yes’ or ‘No’; anything more than this comes from evil.

Tragically, many Christians have sought to reduce these words to a simple rule or law.  For instance, Quakers take this to mean that a believer should never swear an oath in court or take a military oath.  To do this, however, is to fall into the trap of the scribes, who were always seeking to reduce divine truth to the technical bottom line.  But I would like to suggest that that to do this is to miss the point of this passage.

William Barclay has noted that, in the time of Jesus, the Jews had developed two unhealthy patterns when it came to taking oaths:  frivolous swearing and evasive swearing.  Frivolous swearing refers to the casual voicing of oaths.  Barclay mentions the Jewish oaths, “By thy life,” “By my head,” or, “May I never see the comfort of Israel if…”  These had become casual and petty prefaces to declarations made, and they had no weight whatsoever.

By evasive swearing, Barclay meant that the Jews had two classes of oaths, “those which were absolutely binding and those which were not.”  A binding oath had the name of God in it.  A non-binding oath did not.  The result, he says, was that “if a man swore by the name of God in any form, he would rigidly keep that oath; but if he swore by heaven, or by earth, or by Jerusalem, or by his head, he felt quite free to break that oath.”[4]

In other words, truth had been reduced to a word game.  Even more so, as we have seen time and again in the Sermon on the Mount, righteousness had been finely tuned to refer only to technical adherence to man-made rules.  That is the particular, specific situation that Jesus is addressing.  His point in this passage has less to do with what specific oaths can and cannot be said than with the fact that we should be the type of people whose hearts are so pure and whose speech is so honest that oaths are not necessary at all.

You’ll notice, for instance, that Jesus mentions the specific oaths of the Jews in our passage:

³⁴ But I say to you, Do not take an oath at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God, ³⁵ or by the earth, for it is his footstool, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King. ³⁶ And do not take an oath by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or black.

In saying this, Jesus was obliterating the little word games the Jews were playing with oaths by revealing that there is no reality upon which you can base an oath that does not belong to God.    The mere fact that God is not mentioned in your oath does not mean He is absent from it, or that you need not be accountable for the words you say.  Heaven is God’s throne.  The Earth is His footstool.  Jerusalem is His city.  And your head belongs to Him, not you.

In other words, we are responsible for every single word we say because we say every single word we say in the presence of a holy God before whom we will one day give account.  Our words should therefore reflect the divine presence of our King.  And, as citizens of the Kingdom, our words should reveal the values of the Kingdom of our citizenship.

“Do not take an oath at all,” means, in essence, “Do not be the type of person whose words are so weightless that they need contrived oaths and swearing to make them appear valid.  Do not be the type of person who has to play games with words.  Let your words be simple and pure just as your heart is.”

Do you see?  Citizens of the Kingdom of God should have speech seasoned with Kingdom simplicity, Kingdom truth, and Kingdom purity.  You should not need oaths.  You should not need verbal dressings.  You should not need word games.  You should not need verbal posturing.

As we approach the Lord’s Table, I am particularly struck by the relevance of this passage to our gathering today.  Just think about it:  when you take the bread and the juice today, these symbols of the body and blood of Jesus, you will place them on your tongues.  We will eat and drink in remembrance of Him.  Specifically, we will eat and drink in remembrance of the redemption He has won for us on the cross.  We will eat and drink in remembrance of the fact that our hearts and minds and tongues are now made whole and new through the blood of Jesus.

What a wonderful occasion this is to think deeply and well on the issue of the purity of our tongues.  As you place the symbols on your tongue, ask yourself this:  does my tongue reveal a redeemed heart?  Has my tongue been made new?

Exodus 5

¹ Afterward Moses and Aaron went and said to Pharaoh, “Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, ‘Let my people go, that they may hold a feast to me in the wilderness.’” ² But Pharaoh said, “Who is the Lord, that I should obey his voice and let Israel go? I do not know the Lord, and moreover, I will not let Israel go.” ³ Then they said, “The God of the Hebrews has met with us. Please let us go a three days’ journey into the wilderness that we may sacrifice to the Lord our God, lest he fall upon us with pestilence or with the sword.” ⁴ But the king of Egypt said to them, “Moses and Aaron, why do you take the people away from their work? Get back to your burdens.” ⁵ And Pharaoh said, “Behold, the people of the land are now many, and you make them rest from their burdens!” ⁶ The same day Pharaoh commanded the taskmasters of the people and their foremen, ⁷ “You shall no longer give the people straw to make bricks, as in the past; let them go and gather straw for themselves. ⁸ But the number of bricks that they made in the past you shall impose on them, you shall by no means reduce it, for they are idle. Therefore they cry, ‘Let us go and offer sacrifice to our God.’ ⁹ Let heavier work be laid on the men that they may labor at it and pay no regard to lying words.” ¹⁰ So the taskmasters and the foremen of the people went out and said to the people, “Thus says Pharaoh, ‘I will not give you straw. ¹¹ Go and get your straw yourselves wherever you can find it, but your work will not be reduced in the least.’” ¹² So the people were scattered throughout all the land of Egypt to gather stubble for straw. ¹³ The taskmasters were urgent, saying, “Complete your work, your daily task each day, as when there was straw.” ¹⁴ And the foremen of the people of Israel, whom Pharaoh’s taskmasters had set over them, were beaten and were asked, “Why have you not done all your task of making bricks today and yesterday, as in the past?” ¹⁵ Then the foremen of the people of Israel came and cried to Pharaoh, “Why do you treat your servants like this? ¹⁶ No straw is given to your servants, yet they say to us, ‘Make bricks!’ And behold, your servants are beaten; but the fault is in your own people.” ¹⁷ But he said, “You are idle, you are idle; that is why you say, ‘Let us go and sacrifice to the Lord.’ ¹⁸ Go now and work. No straw will be given you, but you must still deliver the same number of bricks.” ¹⁹ The foremen of the people of Israel saw that they were in trouble when they said, “You shall by no means reduce your number of bricks, your daily task each day.” ²⁰ They met Moses and Aaron, who were waiting for them, as they came out from Pharaoh; ²¹ and they said to them, “The Lord look on you and judge, because you have made us stink in the sight of Pharaoh and his servants, and have put a sword in their hand to kill us.” ²² Then Moses turned to the Lord and said, “O Lord, why have you done evil to this people? Why did you ever send me? ²³ For since I came to Pharaoh to speak in your name, he has done evil to this people, and you have not delivered your people at all.”

Tony Evans once asked his congregation to imagine with him that a man calls his son in and asks his son to take the trash out.[1]  “Oh, yes!” his son exclaims. “I will take the trash out.  You are so wise and so wonderful.  I love your commandments.  I will take the trash out!”

The son finishes speaking and the father and son stare at each other.  “Well,” the father says, “take the trash out!”

“Ah, yes!” the son responds.  “Your words are so beautiful and so true.  Who could doubt them?  In fact that they are so beautiful that I believe they are worthy to be sung in praise!”  Then the son begins to sing:  “Take the trash out!  Let us take the trash out!  I must take the traaaaaash out!  Amen!”

Again, the two stare at each other.  “Son,” the father begins, “I don’t know what’s wrong with you, but I would like for you to take the trash out now.”

“Yes!  Yes!” the boy proclaims.  “Take the trash out!  Only you could have asked such a thing!  I love you so much and I love your word so much!  I believe I will write that down and study it!”  And here the boy writes down his father’s words in a little pad he produces from his back pocket:  “Take…the…trash…out!”  “Oh, father!  I will read this every day!  I will commit it to memory!  I will hide this in my heart!  Take the trash out!”

What an absurd scene, no?  The father has issue a simple command, and the son, while claiming to love the father, does everything but obey.  That may sound familiar to us.  In fact, tragically, that little scene might be a pretty apt description of what we do in churches all the time.

Obedience can be a painful thing.  Perhaps that’s why we are so hesitant to do it.  Dallas Willard has written that, “the missing note in evangelical life today is not in the first instance spirituality but rather obedience.”[2]  That’s a pretty good take on the current situation:  spirituality without obedience.  We do so love to talk spiritual talk.  We even talk of having victory and a great walk with the Lord.  But, as Jerry Bridges wisely said, “We pray for victory when we know we should be acting in obedience.”[3]

Moses has been charged with an amazing task:  the task of walking into Egypt and demanding the freedom of the Hebrews.  And, in fact, he obeys.  This evening, however, we are going to consider the price of obedience and, with it, one of the reasons why we are so hesitant to do the Lord’s will.

I. The world does not understand God, the people of God, or the need for obeying God. (v.1-5)

I would like for us to begin with a very simple fact:  the world does not understand God, the people of God, or the need for obeying God.  That fact becomes abundantly evident in Moses’ initial clash with Pharaoh.

¹ Afterward Moses and Aaron went and said to Pharaoh, “Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, ‘Let my people go, that they may hold a feast to me in the wilderness.’”

It should be pointed out here that, at that time, religious minorities were granted some degree of freedom to worship in Egyptian society.  So Moses and Aaron are simply asking Pharaoh to grant the same liberties to the Hebrews that he has granted to others.  Of course, the Hebrews are no mere minority.  They are, in fact, as we have already seen, a large group of people that Pharaoh believes He must subjugate lest they rise up against him.

What is more interesting is the fact that Moses, once again, is, at best, telling a half-truth and, at worst, lying.  On the face of them, his words would seem to imply that they simply want some time for religious observance and that they will return.  It is a half-truth because, of course, they will worship God and the exodus itself is an act of trust in God.  But, as we know and as Moses knows, the Lord wants much more than this.  He wants His people free.

Pharaoh, of course, will have none of it.

² But Pharaoh said, “Who is the Lord, that I should obey his voice and let Israel go? I do not know the Lord, and moreover, I will not let Israel go.” ³ Then they said, “The God of the Hebrews has met with us. Please let us go a three days’ journey into the wilderness that we may sacrifice to the Lord our God, lest he fall upon us with pestilence or with the sword.” ⁴ But the king of Egypt said to them, “Moses and Aaron, why do you take the people away from their work? Get back to your burdens.” ⁵ And Pharaoh said, “Behold, the people of the land are now many, and you make them rest from their burdens!”

Pharaoh’s question is crucial because it helps us understand not only his reaction but the reaction of the world to Christian obedience today as well.  Simply put, Pharaoh doesn’t know God and, for that reason, is utterly disinterested in Moses’ desire to obey God.  There is disdain in his voice.  “Who is the Lord, that I should obey his voice and let Israel go?  I do not know the Lord.”  Moses tries again, this time, once again, veiling the whole truth.  He suggests that the Lord is an angry God who will strike Israel if they don’t do their religious duties.  It would have been much more honest to say that God will strike Pharaoh if he doesn’t let Israel go.

Pharaoh is unmoved and clearly irritated:  “Get back to your burdens.”  This is the equivalent of, “Oh good grief!  Enough of this religious nonsense!  Get back to the real world and do your task.”

May I suggest to you that this has always been the posture of the world towards the people of God?  Even at times in our country’s history when there was more of a cultural respect for Christianity, the lost heart has never understood the redeemed heart.  And now we see this clearly as the last vestiges of the old Bible belt are slipping away.  I do not meant to sound alarmist when I say that American culture is closer to Egypt today than it has ever been:  it is a culture that does not understand or value the things of God.

We must understand this fact or we will continue the lamentable and silly tradition of Christian outrage at the incredulity of the lost.  Brothers and sister in Christ, the world simply does not care that you are here.  They do not understand your being here.  All of our talk of “God’s Word” and “the cross” and “walking with Jesus” are just religious mumblings to the world, even though they are life to us.  They are irritated by it because they have never experienced it.  It is a foreign intrusion into the worldview of modernity.  “Oh just stop that mumbo jumbo and get back to work.”  That’s what Pharaoh said.  That’s what the world says today.

I press this issue because it somehow seems to me that many believers still think that American culture should grant some legitimacy to Christian belief and practice.  Yes, it was nice when that did happen, culturally speaking.  But it likely only spoiled the church and deceived the lost into thinking they were actually saved.  I think that unnerving feeling that many people are experiencing today is simply the result of seeing the world’s true feelings towards the gospel naked and unmasked.  Many of you have grown up in situations when this was not the case.

In my own lifetime I remember when there was greater cultural respect for Christianity, but not now.  We are in Egypt.  We are in first century Rome.  The lords of the world will grant no respect to the things or the people of God.  As Pharaoh said, so says the world:  “I do not know the Lord.”  This absence of cultural concessions can either be seen as a great tragedy, or it can be seen as a great opportunity.  At the very least, everybody is being more honest these days about what they think of God and His people.  What will we do in the face of that fact?

II. Obedience in a hostile culture oftentimes brings greater suffering to God’s people. (v.6-19)

Moses and Aaron learn a hard lesson.  It’s one we must learn too.  Observe the result of their obedience.

⁶ The same day Pharaoh commanded the taskmasters of the people and their foremen, ⁷ “You shall no longer give the people straw to make bricks, as in the past; let them go and gather straw for themselves. ⁸ But the number of bricks that they made in the past you shall impose on them, you shall by no means reduce it, for they are idle. Therefore they cry, ‘Let us go and offer sacrifice to our God.’ ⁹ Let heavier work be laid on the men that they may labor at it and pay no regard to lying words.” ¹⁰ So the taskmasters and the foremen of the people went out and said to the people, “Thus says Pharaoh, ‘I will not give you straw. ¹¹ Go and get your straw yourselves wherever you can find it, but your work will not be reduced in the least.’” ¹² So the people were scattered throughout all the land of Egypt to gather stubble for straw. ¹³ The taskmasters were urgent, saying, “Complete your work, your daily task each day, as when there was straw.” ¹⁴ And the foremen of the people of Israel, whom Pharaoh’s taskmasters had set over them, were beaten and were asked, “Why have you not done all your task of making bricks today and yesterday, as in the past?” ¹⁵ Then the foremen of the people of Israel came and cried to Pharaoh, “Why do you treat your servants like this? ¹⁶ No straw is given to your servants, yet they say to us, ‘Make bricks!’ And behold, your servants are beaten; but the fault is in your own people.”

That is a legitimate question:  “Why do you treat your servants like this?”  To use an exhausted cliché, we feel the Hebrews pain!  We would have said the same.  What did they do to warrant such harsh and unreasonable treatment?  Their minds must have reeled with confusion and guesses.  Did somebody insult Pharaoh?  Have we not worked hard enough?

In truth, the answer to their question is found at the end of Exodus 4 where we see their reaction to Moses’ and Aaron’s arrival and proclamation of deliverance.  Do you remember?

²⁹ Then Moses and Aaron went and gathered together all the elders of the people of Israel. ³⁰ Aaron spoke all the words that the Lord had spoken to Moses and did the signs in the sight of the people. ³¹ And the people believed; and when they heard that the Lord had visited the people of Israel and that he had seen their affliction, they bowed their heads and worshiped.

There is the answer as to why they were being treated such.  They were being treated this way because they set their feet on the path of deliverance and, as we have seen, that is a path the world despises.  They are suffering for their faith.  They are suffering for obedience.  They realize this when Pharaoh answers them thus:

¹⁷ But he said, “You are idle, you are idle; that is why you say, ‘Let us go and sacrifice to the Lord.’ ¹⁸ Go now and work. No straw will be given you, but you must still deliver the same number of bricks.” ¹⁹ The foremen of the people of Israel saw that they were in trouble when they said, “You shall by no means reduce your number of bricks, your daily task each day.”

Ah!  There it is!  They are being treated in this way because they want to worship their God.  And how does Pharaoh know this?  Because Moses and Aaron went and proclaimed it to Pharaoh.  And why did they proclaim this?  Because God sent them and the people trusted them.

So here, initially, their obedience leads to suffering.  It is a difficult truth to grasp.  Teresa of Avila once famously said, “If this is how God treats his friends, no wonder he has so few of them!”  If we’re honest, we have perhaps sometimes felt that way.

In truth, obedience in a hostile culture oftentimes brings greater suffering to God’s people.  This is difficult for us to grasp because, in our country, there are whole Christian movements that seem dedicated to the exact opposite idea:  that obedience and faith bring material blessings.  You can see that in our Christian bookstores, where the titles often reflect self-help philosophies and “name-it-claim-it” heresies.  You can see that in Christian movies where everything just seems to work out for those who trust in God.

But guess what?  Sometimes, when you walk with God, things don’t get easier but harder.  Sometimes the cancer isn’t miraculously healed.  Sometimes the couple isn’t finally able to have a baby.  Sometimes the kicker misses the game winning field goal.  Sometimes the promotion doesn’t happen.

Sometimes you get fired for following Jesus.  Sometimes you lose your spouse.  Sometimes you get killed.  Sometimes not, but sometimes so.  Sometimes Pharaoh stops giving you straw for bricks and increases your workload.

Have we forgotten that the reward of obedience is in the act itself, in the privilege of simply following our King?  Have we forgotten that present suffering does not negate the goodness of God or the promise of God or the offer of future glory?  Have we reached the point where we will determine the goodness of God’s decrees on the basis of what they win for us here and now?

Our brother Paul, in 2 Corinthians 4, wrote this:

¹⁶ So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. ¹⁷ For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, ¹⁸ as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.

The Hebrews wanted deliverance, but what they wanted primarily was deliverance from suffering.  But sometimes the path of deliverance goes through the gate of greater suffering.

III. To be obedient is to decide that the worldly price of obedience is worth the divine blessing of it. (v.20-23)

This whole chapter has been leading up to a very awkward encounter.  Moses and Aaron must now stand before the Israelites to face their hurt and anger and confusion.  It does not go well.

²⁰ They met Moses and Aaron, who were waiting for them, as they came out from Pharaoh; ²¹ and they said to them, “The Lord look on you and judge, because you have made us stink in the sight of Pharaoh and his servants, and have put a sword in their hand to kill us.”

As far as I can tell, this is the earliest example of “This stinks!” in human history.  “You have made us stink in the sight of Pharaoh and his servants!”  And notice the irony of their rebuke:  “The Lord look on you and judge!”  What they did not realize, though, was that the Lord was looking upon Moses and Aaron and had judged their actions and had found them obedient.  The Hebrews assumed that they had sinned and that God was judging their sin by bringing further pain on His people.  But the exact opposite was the case:  they had not sinned, they had obeyed, and the greater suffering they were enduring was the path they had to walk to be free.

It is, as we have said, a hard truth to see in the midst of the fire, and even Moses cannot see it.

²² Then Moses turned to the Lord and said, “O Lord, why have you done evil to this people? Why did you ever send me? ²³ For since I came to Pharaoh to speak in your name, he has done evil to this people, and you have not delivered your people at all.”

In truth, this is a terrifying statement.  Moses accuses the Lord of evil.  He does so on two bases:  (1) that God allowed greater suffering to fall on His people and (2) that God had not yet delivered His people as He said He would.  He is, in other words, condemning God because He was not doing things in the manner that he, Moses, and the Hebrews thought and assumed He would.

It is a natural reaction and one we should not be too quick to condemn.  Of course it is wrong, and accusing God of evil is a sin, but Moses is speaking out of the deepest depths of his own agony.  The Lord can handle Moses’ honesty.  The Lord knows that Moses does not see the full picture, but that he soon will.  And the Lord knows that Moses too must be delivered from his own darkened understanding.

Obedience to God demands a hard decision on the front end.  To be obedient is to decide that the worldly price of obedience is worth the divine blessing of it.  Moses will have to reach the point where he decides whether or not the blessing of God is worth the pain we must sometimes go through to receive it.  The Hebrews will have to reach the same point.

And so will we.

The question confronting the church in every age is precisely this question:  will we obey God even in light of the costs of doing so?  Were it to cost us our lives to follow, would we follow?  Were it to cost us our families to obey, would we obey?  Were it to mean a life of hardship and depravation, would we still bow before our King?

I pray the answer is yes.  It should be.  It must be.  And for this reason:  because despite all of our fears and doubts and anger, in point of fact God is good.

God is gracious.

God is kind.

God is faithful.

God has not forgotten us.

God is not playing games with us.

God is not sadistic.

God is not experimenting on us.

God is worthy of our praise.

God is worthy of our trust.

God is worthy of our obedience.

Let us follow our King.

Matthew 5:31-32

³¹ “It was also said, ‘Whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce.’ ³² But I say to you that everyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of sexual immorality, makes her commit adultery, and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.

To be perfectly honest, I am approaching our subject today with a measure of caution, though I want to make it clear that I am not approaching it with any apology.  We must never apologize for preaching God’s Word.  Even so, this passage is, perhaps more than any other, the one part of the Sermon on the Mount I have not been “looking forward to” preaching.  Not because I don’t believe it is true.  It is true. But rather because the issue of divorce touches so many lives and is disagreed upon by so many Christians and is so fraught with controversy that my fear is we won’t give God’s Word a clear and accurate hearing this morning.  Frankly, I fear that our emotional reactions to the idea of divorce and to the idea of a sermon on divorce will hinder us from giving Scripture an accurate hearing.  Of course, giving it an accurate hearing assumes that I am giving it an accurate preaching, and that raises yet another question:  what exactly does Jesus say here and what does He mean by what He says?

I am also feeling a sense of caution because in any gathering of this size there will be numerous instances of divorce, each containing numerous backstories that may or may not grant legitimacy to the divorce.  I do not begrudge your emails.  Feel free to send them.  But this will, indeed, be a sermon that gets emails because of how sensitive this issue is.

I’m ok with all of that so long as we all agree on certain fundamental truths.  First, that God’s Word reveals God’s heart and we should bow to God’s heart.  Second, that God’s Word should shape our opinions and not vice verse.  And third, that the preacher’s job is to proclaim God’s Word regardless of how popular or unpopular it might be.

I suspect there is something else we can all agree on:  something is wrong with our approach to marriage in this country and this is reflected in the divorce culture in which we live.  By “divorce culture” I am referring to the whole, national malaise concerning marriage and divorce.  I am referring to the phenomenon of cheap, disposable marriages.  I am not saying that every divorce indicates that those in the marriage viewed it as cheap and disposable.  That would be absurd.  Many of you in this room have been through divorce and would see it as anything but inconsequential.  One member of our church told me this week that the aftermath of a divorce feels like standing in the rubble of your home that has just been obliterated by a tornado, wondering how to start picking up the pieces.  No, not all who have gone through a divorce are apathetic about it, but it is undeniable that our culture in general approaches the issue in many ways that reveal a spirit of profound misunderstanding about what marriage even is and what exactly is happening when divorce happens.  Even when we agonize over divorce, we oftentimes don’t have the theological and biblical understanding to understand even the origins of our own pain.

How has our culture reached this point?  How have we reached this point of confusion concerning marriage and divorce? I am inclined to lay the blame primarily at the feet of the sin of selfishness, and I think there are good reasons for doing so.  But I am also impressed by the opinion of Midge Decter who wrote this while reviewing Barbara Dafoe Whitehead’s book, The Divorce Culture:

The truth is, the divorce culture has come upon us not as the result of our selfishness—people have always been selfish—and not as the result of the tension between the sexes—that tension has been a permanent fixture of human existence—and not out of any unconcern for our children—children have seldom in history been so much attended to and so kindly treated as ours. The disarray…is brought about by the fact that the lives we lead are in respect of ease and comfort and confidence and good health simply unprecedented. Never have so many, even the poor among us, had so much. We are disoriented. We do not know whether to laugh or to cry; we do not know whom or what to thank; and we cannot think of what there might be to want next. And so we giggle and preen and complain and forget our debts and keep on seeking for things (and sometimes finding them). In short, there is no merely social cure for what ails us.[1]

I suspect there’s something to that.  We are a spoiled and comfortable people.  Our relationships reflect this fact, and so do our divorce statistics.  We are, indeed, disoriented.  And what should one do when he is disoriented?  Well, he should seek to be oriented.  And how does one get oriented?  He finds a true and fixed point of orientation.  He finds “true North,” we might say.  Or, to put it another way, he finds Jesus.

That’s what we’re going to do today.  We’re going to reorient ourselves on the issues of marriage and divorce by listening to Jesus.  What, then, does Jesus say on the issue?  How should we as Christians think?

I. Marriage is not disposable.  It is sacred before God.

Jesus has just spoken on lust.  He has said that we can commit adultery in our hearts by looking at somebody with lustful intent.  He continues to speak of adultery, this times in terms of divorce.

³¹ “It was also said, ‘Whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce.’ ³² But I say to you that everyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of sexual immorality, makes her commit adultery, and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.

As you hear these words, it is important to remember that these two verses are a continuation of the preceding verses concerning lust and the human heart.  The sections should not be separated and isolated from one another.  Here, too, Jesus is saying something about lust and the human heart.  He is expounding further on the verses immediately preceding this.

To understand what is going on here, we must understand the specific, first century Jewish controversy concerning marriage and divorce to which Jesus is referring in these words.  The controversy involved two passages on marriage and divorce from the Old Testament and what they meant for the issue at hand.  The verses are found in Deuteronomy 22 and 24.

First, consider what Moses says in Deuteronomy 22.

¹³ “If any man takes a wife and goes in to her and then hates her ¹⁴ and accuses her of misconduct and brings a bad name upon her, saying, ‘I took this woman, and when I came near her, I did not find in her evidence of virginity,’ ¹⁵ then the father of the young woman and her mother shall take and bring out the evidence of her virginity to the elders of the city in the gate. ¹⁶ And the father of the young woman shall say to the elders, ‘I gave my daughter to this man to marry, and he hates her; ¹⁷ and behold, he has accused her of misconduct, saying, “I did not find in your daughter evidence of virginity.” And yet this is the evidence of my daughter’s virginity.’ And they shall spread the cloak before the elders of the city. ¹⁸ Then the elders of that city shall take the man and whip him, ¹⁹ and they shall fine him a hundred shekels of silver and give them to the father of the young woman, because he has brought a bad name upon a virgin of Israel. And she shall be his wife. He may not divorce her all his days. ²⁰ But if the thing is true, that evidence of virginity was not found in the young woman, ²¹ then they shall bring out the young woman to the door of her father’s house, and the men of her city shall stone her to death with stones, because she has done an outrageous thing in Israel by whoring in her father’s house. So you shall purge the evil from your midst. ²² “If a man is found lying with the wife of another man, both of them shall die, the man who lay with the woman, and the woman. So you shall purge the evil from Israel.

This seems relatively clear enough.  In the Old Testament, if a man married a woman and then found that she was not a virgin, that she had been sexually active before their marriage, he could have her put to death.  Then, in Deuteronomy 24, Moses wrote this:

¹ 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, ² and if she goes and becomes another man’s wife, ³ and the latter man hates her and writes her a certificate of divorce and puts it in her hand and sends her out of his house, or if the latter man dies, who took her to be his wife, ⁴ then her former husband, who sent her away, may not take her again to be his wife, after she has been defiled, for that is an abomination before the Lord. And you shall not bring sin upon the land that the Lord your God is giving you for an inheritance.

Here, Moses says that the discovery of “indecency” in the wife by the husband validates the giving of a decree of divorce.  This decree, it would seem, was actually for the woman’s protection as it would allow her to remarry without impunity.

Taken together, in the minds of the Jews, these two texts created a problem.  If Deuteronomy 22 reveals that sexual indecency was punishable by death and Deuteronomy 24 reveals that indecency could lead to legal divorce and the granting of a certificate of divorce, does that not mean that the indecency spoken of in Deuteronomy 24 must be of a different sort than the indecency spoken of in Deuteronomy 22, for the one leads to death and the other to a decree of divorce?

Two schools of thought quickly arose among the Jews over this question.  The followers of Rabbi Shammai took a strict view, interpreting the indecency in both chapters as infidelity, but arguing that Deuteronomy 22 referred to sexual sin before marriage by the woman which she had attempted to cover up and that Deuteronomy 24 referred to adultery after marriage.  The followers of Rabbi Hillel interpreted it much more liberally to refer to any kind of unfaithfulness.  In other words, the indecency spoken of in Deuteronomy 24 might be almost anything.

As Hillel’s more liberal interpretation caught on, it opened the door for great abuses in the area of divorce and remarriage.  Carl Vaught has pointed out that it was permissible for a man to make his wife go into a house where a person had died, which rendered her ceremonially unclean, and then give her a writ of divorce when she came out.[2]  In other words, this broad definition of indecency led to husbandly manipulation of the wife to make her indecent and unclean.  Furthermore, others argued that you could divorce your wife if she spoiled your food or if the husband “found another fairer than she.”  Daniel Doriani points to the 2^nd century (B.C.) Apocryphal book, Ecclesiasticus, which says, “If she will not do as you tell her, get rid of her.”[3]

The upshot of all of this is that Jesus was being drawn into and was addressing a debate over precisely this question:  should marriages be disposable?  In general terms he was addressing this issue:  just how important is marriage?  To many of the Jews, marriage had become tragically disposable.  By following what they understood to be the letter of the law, they were able to dissolve unions that God had made between men and women.  Here, too, Jesus is saying that righteousness is not just a matter of the strict adherence of technical law.  Rather, righteousness is a matter of the inner condition of the human heart before God.  Any heart that could reduce the miracle of marriage to the parsing of particular words is a heart going in the wrong direction.

Oddly enough, we as believers often approach our text this morning with the same mentality:  what is the exact meaning of the words that will allow me to end my marriage?  However, let us note that even that is not the point.  The point is the condition of our hearts and whether or not we value marriage as the Lord God does.

When all is said and done, we modern Americans have our own equivalents to the Jewish heresy of, “If she burns your toast you can divorce her.”  Our equivalents are more subtle and are usually bathed in emotional and sentimental language:  “We fell out of love.”  “We just grew apart.” “Sometimes life takes you in different directions.”  “I’m not happy anymore.”

Brothers and sisters in Christ, marriage is not disposable and these kinds of vague sentimental assertions are simply that:  vague and sentimental.  They do not speak of the rock-solid commitment of covenant vows expressed between a man and woman before God and in sight of the assembled saints.  They do not honor the profound mystery of God making two fleshes into one flesh.  They are our own weird parallels to, “She burnt my toast.  It’s over.”  What is more, apparently divorcing for these shallow reasons does not work anyway.  I was struck by the following words in an article highlighting some research on the issue of divorce and happiness.

The popularly held notion that divorce is the answer to marital unhappiness was recently debunked by a team of leading family scholars at the University of Chicago.  Their study discovered that people who divorce their spouses when marriages get rocky are less likely to find happiness than those who stay married.  They found no evidence that unhappily married adults who divorced were any happier than unhappily married people who stay married.  Researchers, led by University of Chicago sociologist Linda Waite, also determined that 80 percent of unhappily married spouses who stayed married reported that their marriages were happy five years later.  Divorce didn’t reduce symptoms of depression or raise self-esteem compared to those who stayed married, the study found.

“In popular discussion, in scholarly literature, the assumption has always been that if a marriage is unhappy, if you get a divorce, it is likely you will be happier than if you stayed married,” said David Blankenhorn of the Institute for American Values.  “This is the first time this has been tested empirically, and there is no evidence to support this assumption.”[4]

No, divorce as a step towards happiness-maintenance does not seem to be a good idea, even by secular standards.  This was the mentality Jesus was dealing with when He said the words in our text.  In many cases, this is the mentality we are dealing with today as well.

D.A. Carson said it well when he said, “Love has become a mixture of physical desire and vague sentimentality; marriage has become a provisional sexual union to be terminated when this pathetic, pygmy love dissolves.”[5]  At the very least let us acknowledge this fact:  marriage is not disposable.  It is sacred before God.  This is a fact that our culture and, most tragically, our churches seem to have forgotten.

II. Divorce is an extreme act that must be considered only with fear and trembling and only within divinely-allowed parameters.

Even so, as Jesus acknowledges, sacred things in a fallen world do not always abide.  There are times when marriages fall apart.  Sometimes divorce must happen, at least from our perspective.  However, even if it must happen, we should see divorce as an extreme act that must be considered only with fear and trembling and only within divinely-allowed parameters.

Divorce is a big deal.  Approached wrongly or selfishly or flippantly, it invites the judgment of God.  Consider the words of the prophet Malachi in Malachi 2:

¹³ And this second thing you do. You cover the Lord’s altar with tears, with weeping and groaning because he no longer regards the offering or accepts it with favor from your hand. ¹⁴ But you say, “Why does he not?” Because the Lord was witness between you and the wife of your youth, to whom you have been faithless, though she is your companion and your wife by covenant. ¹⁵ Did he not make them one, with a portion of the Spirit in their union? And what was the one God seeking? Godly offspring. So guard yourselves in your spirit, and let none of you be faithless to the wife of your youth. ¹⁶ “For the man who does not love his wife but divorces her, says the Lord, the God of Israel, covers his garment with violence, says the Lord of hosts. So guard yourselves in your spirit, and do not be faithless.”

Yes, a sinful divorce is an impediment to our relationship with God.  It affects our worship and our walk.  It is, as Malachi says, a “violent” thing.  How so?  Because, as C.S. Lewis rightly pointed out, divorce is like an amputation.

…Christianity teaches that marriage is for life. There is, of course, a difference here between different Churches: some do not admit divorce at all; some allow it reluctantly in very special cases. It is a great pity that Christians should disagree about such a question; but for an ordinary layman the thing to notice is that the Churches all agree with one another about marriage a great deal more than any of them agrees with the outside world. I mean, they all regard divorce as something like cutting up a living body, as a kind of surgical operation. Some of them think the operation so violent that it cannot be done at all; others admit it as a desperate remedy in extreme cases. They are all agreed that it is more like having both your legs cut off than it is like dissolving a business partnership or even deserting a regiment. What they all disagree with is the modern view that it is a simple readjustment of partners, to be made whenever people feel they are no longer in love with one another, or when either of them falls in love with someone else.[6]

Yes, it is “a kind of surgical operation.”  It is separating one flesh back into two.  This is why, in Matthew 19, Jesus evokes the language of Genesis in responding to the Pharisees questions about divorce.

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.” 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.”

That is a fuller statement than our text this morning, and the primary addition is a harkening back to the first marriage of our first parents in the Garden of Eden.  Just as God brought Adam and Eve together and made one of two, so He does today.  For this reason, divorce, even if necessary, should be approached with fear and trembling.  It is no small thing.

So, too, in Mark 10, we Mark’s account of that scene:

² And Pharisees came up and in order to test him asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?” ³ He answered them, “What did Moses command you?” ⁴ They said, “Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of divorce and to send her away.” ⁵ And Jesus said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart he wrote you this commandment. ⁶ But from the beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female.’ ⁷ ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, ⁸ and the two shall become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two but one flesh. ⁹ What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.” ¹⁰ And in the house the disciples asked him again about this matter. ¹¹ And he said to them, “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her, ¹² and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.”

The last two verses highlight the seriousness of divorce.  In verses 11 and 12 Jesus says that wrongful divorced and divorce unsanctioned by God leaves the people in a state of adultery. Carl Vaught has offered a helpful viewpoint on verses 11 and 12 in particular:

In interpreting this passage, everything hinges upon how we translate the Greek word kai in the second and third clauses.  Though it is usually translated “and,” it may also be rendered “in order to”; and if that is done in this case, the significance of the passage is transformed immediately.  Let us then translate the verses in Mark with this possibility in mind:

And He said to them, “Whoever divorces his wife in order to marry another woman, commits adultery against her; and if she divorces her husband in order to marry another man, she is committing adultery.”[7]

I am not sure that Vaught’s suggestion holds water, but it is worth noting as a possibility.  That being said, it is undeniable that the motivation behind divorce is a key element that Jesus is addressing.  To divorce your spouse simply out of a desire to be with another person is a great wrong.  To divorce your spouse for selfish reasons, or because you do not want to work at the relationship, is also a great wrong.  In truth, the legitimate bases of divorce seem to be limited indeed.

It is clear, from our text, that sexual immorality is grounds for a divorce.  It should be noted that Jesus never says you must or even should divorce your spouse if they fall sexually.  Rather, He says divorce is permitted in such cases.  I have known many Christian couples who survived affairs, who worked through the pain and tragedy of sexual sin and came through restored on the other side.  Even here, we should strive to see God work a miracle and not be quick to abandon our spouses.

Are there other acceptable reasons for divorce?  It is generally agreed that Paul offers one in 1 Corinthians 7.

¹² To the rest I say (I, not the Lord) that if any brother has a wife who is an unbeliever, and she consents to live with him, he should not divorce her. ¹³ If any woman has a husband who is an unbeliever, and he consents to live with her, she should not divorce him. ¹⁴ For the unbelieving husband is made holy because of his wife, and the unbelieving wife is made holy because of her husband. Otherwise your children would be unclean, but as it is, they are holy. ¹⁵ But if the unbelieving partner separates, let it be so. In such cases the brother or sister is not enslaved. God has called you to peace. ¹⁶ For how do you know, wife, whether you will save your husband? Or how do you know, husband, whether you will save your wife?

This is what is known as “the Pauline exception.”  Here, God’s Word would appear to allow divorce in the case of abandonment.  If your unbelieving spouse abandons you, you are free to divorce.

Are there other cases?  Here we enter into a very old and very heated debate among Christians, and we should do so humbly.  A strict reading of Scripture (as I read it, anyway) would appear to allow divorce in only two cases:  sexual immorality and abandonment.  Some hold only to those two.  Other Christians, who equally love and value the authority of God’s Word, argue that, in context, Jesus is addressing a specific issue in a specific cultural context and in light of a specific debate among the Jews.  They argue that Jesus is striking against the Jews’ penchant for easy divorce, and that His intent was not to give an exhaustive statement and catalogue of every acceptable reason for divorce.

It is true that context should inform our reading.  Even so, the words of Jesus do not appear to me to leave a great deal of leeway, and we should not seek to distort His words for our own purposes.

What is more challenging to me, personally, is Paul’s granting of an additional reason for divorce.  Let me explain.  In 1 Corinthians 7, as we just saw, Paul, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, grants freedom to a spouse who has been abandoned.  Presumably this is the freedom to remarry and not be in sin.  It is likely, also, freedom to divorce.  What is interesting there is that this fact alone would mitigate against a woodenly strict reading of Jesus’ words in the gospels.  Meaning, apparently there is at least one other area in which divorce is justifiable, an area no readily apparent when we read the words of Jesus in the gospels.  Is Paul conflicting with Jesus?  By no means.  We believe that all Scripture is inspired by God.

But if that is the case (and it seems indisputable to me that it is), that may mean a couple of things.  It may simply mean that the justifiable bases for divorce have gone from one (sexual immorality) to two (sexual immorality and/or abandonment).  Or some interpret it to mean that Paul is presenting us with a paradigm in which we evaluate current situations not specifically addressed in Scripture but always in light of the teachings of Scripture.

Let me use one example:  abuse.  Jesus does not address the issue of physical abuse explicitly, and certainly not in relation to the question of marriage and divorce.  However, Scripture seems to offer teachings that might inform our consideration of such an issue.  For instance, mothers are enjoined to love their children (Titus 2:4).  Jesus assumes that even fallen men would never neglect the needs of their children (Matthew 7:9-11).  Jesus gives dire warnings against those who would harm children (Mark 9:42).  Furthermore, Jesus himself stops a group of men from violently assaulting a woman (John 8:1-11).

What are we to make of these things?  Are we free carefully to build other legitimate cases for divorce on the basis of other clear biblical principles?  As a rule, I think this is an idea fraught with danger.  Such an idea would open the door to a chaotic imposition of our own opinions on the text.  However, it is perhaps legitimate to say that sometimes life presents us with competing values.  For instance, a Christian wife will seek to value the miracle of marriage and the significance of the two-become-one work of God.  On the other hand, if this wife is being violently abused, or if her husband is abusing the children, then certainly the passages mentioned above would mean that the act of divorce in this case is not selfish or self-centered.  Rather, it is being done in light of the whole counsel of God’s Word and in an effort to protect herself and her children from violent crimes.

Another way of saying this might be to say that sometimes divorce is the lesser of wrongs, even if not explicitly mandated in Scripture.  I will be so bold as to suggest that sexual immorality, abandonment, and (in my opinion) abuse are legitimate grounds for divorce, given the understanding and approach articulated above.  Again, this is my opinion, and I hope I have shown that I have sought to ground this opinion in Scripture as well.

Regardless, even when permitted, divorce must be seen as a radical and painful step to be taken in the fear of God and in light of the whole counsel of God.

III. The grace of God meets us here and now to forgive and equip us, not to license us for shallow approaches to marriage.  

To leave the matter there would be to leave some of you with relief and others of you with great shame.  After all, in a gathering of this size, it is very likely that we have legitimate and illegitimate divorces present.  But is that the end of the matter?  If you divorced wrongly, are you simply stuck in your sin and guilt?  Even if you divorced for legitimate reasons, must you always carry around the stigma of divorce?

Let me say, on the basis of the blood of Jesus Christ, and in the shadow of the cross on which He paid our sin-debt, and in the face of the empty tomb where Jesus rose victorious:  no and no!  Does divorce fall well short of God’s ideal?  Yes.  Is it oftentimes, maybe even most times, a sin?  Yes.  But is it unforgiveable and the sin above all other sins?  Absolutely not.

I would be lying if I did not tell you that I oftentimes marvel at the way we have separated this one sin from all others.  In many churches divorced people are made to feel like second-class citizens and subpar Christians.  But may I remind you that the central point of what Jesus is doing at this juncture in the Sermon on the Mount is reminding us that righteousness is not defined by technical adherence to the letter of the Law but rather to the inner condition of the human heart?  Can I remind you that the very heart of the gospel is that Christ has come to free us from the bondage and shackles of sin, death, and hell?

Yet, it is important that the forgiveness of God not be turned into a license for selfishness.  To say, “Eh, I’ll just divorce her and God will forgive me,” is to reveal a lack of the very repentance that opens the heart to forgiveness in the first place.  That mentality makes a mockery of the cross, and God is not mocked.

But for you who have struggled under the taint of the divorced, who have been the object of Satan’s particular attacks and arrows of guilt, may I say to you that Jesus Christ, Lord of Heaven and Earth, is here, now, with open arms.  He loves all of us poor sinners, divorced or not.  His blood is more than sufficient.

Whatever you’ve done or not done, wherever you’ve been or not been, whatever road you walked to get here…the love of Jesus is sufficient!  The grace of Jesus is sufficient!  The blood of Jesus is sufficient!

Come to Jesus, brothers and sisters.  Come to Jesus and live.