Word of Salvation – Vol.26 No.51 – September 1980

 

And Now… Throw-away Spouses??

 

Sermon by the Rev. Arent I. de Graaf on Matthew 19:3-11

Scripture Reading: 1Samuel 25:14-44; Matthew 19: 3–11

Psalter Hymnal: 116:1,2,3; 270; 408:3; 481

 

We are living in what somebody has called: The throwaway-society.  There was a time when you bought something, you hung on to it.  You repaired it when it broke down, patched it up, mended, fixed…. until at last, after decades of useful life you reluctantly parted with what – after all – had become a part of your life.  Furniture was to last, so was a car, a radio, a sewing machine.  For that matter clothes and shoes were supposed to last also.  But now?  Hankies that you can wash and use again are getting outmoded.  Now we have tissues.  One nose-blow and out it goes.  The good old shoemaker or cobbler is becoming a breed as rare as the old blacksmith.  You now buy a pair of shoes and after some wear you throw them out.  It is too costly to repair.  The watchmaker is the same: it is already a good deal more economical to own a digital watch without moving parts than one that needs a watchmaker, and the day will soon come that only the very rich can afford a watchmaker to repair grandmother’s heirloom clock.  A car is not built to last; if it does you pay a fortune.  Socks are no more darned, you throw them out when they get “holey”.

There are many electrical goods and appliances which you can’t even open up or take apart.  When they give trouble you throw them out and buy another.  Repairing things becomes old fashioned and expensive.  Who repairs things?  You throw out and buy new!  Not only does that keep the factories running, but then also you can get new things every once in a while.  We live in the disposable age, the throw-away-society, enormously wasteful of course, but that’s what we call, “Economy”!

But now it seems that this doesn’t only go that way with things – but also with people!  Well may we wonder: Has the age dawned of the throw-away SPOUSES?

Marry a spouse till the warranty period is over, throw out and get a new one?  There was a time that divorce just did not occur among us, it couldn’t be done.  And because it couldn’t be done people worked harder at their marriage, They prayed harder and hung on.  Even among non-Christians (due to the influence of the Christian faith in our western societies), divorce was a somewhat shameful thing.  A person seldom would mention if someone was divorced.  One hoped it would not be found out.  Of course there were unhappy marriages, but all was done to repair them Replacement of a marriage was even more unheard of than replacement of a lounge-room suite, that, too, went along for life.  The Roman Catholic Church had a special court for the dissolution of marriages, the so-called “ROTA” in Rome but many people didn’t even dare to apply: it was known for the long, long time the court took to do its work, and the secular courts fared not much better.  Marriage, you see, was for life.  FOR LIFE!  We still say that in our ceremonies, even the civil ones but now many say it with tongue-in-cheek, or they say it with real feelings of dread: FOR LIFE ??  LIFE?  Man, how can you?

This is a disposable age!  All of life cannot be spent in one house, in one bed, under one roof with the same sinner?  The same dreary sight the same tired old jokes, the same irritating mannerisms, the same clashing views?  Man, you have to be joking!!  And then: be ready, be servant, be door-mat – for the same old tiresome person?  The idea is preposterous.  No wonder our whole society begins now to revolt against it.  Man, we have rights!  We have a right to happiness!  Never mind what happens to the kids.  You better make sure you don’t get them in the first place.  They, too, are old fashioned, relics of a bygone age, How silly it is to stick to just one partner.

Look, says Jesus there you have it now, there is the hardness of your hearts.  And He shows us in His word that there isn’t THAT much new about this in the world!  This hardness of heart, that treated a human being as a throwaway thing, a consumer product, was there ever since that first couple in paradise turned away from obedience to God.  They found that their rebellious me-first lives now also jarred and jangled each other.  Moses also was troubled by that hardness of hearts.  He allowed divorce – we shall later hear in what case however – but at least he stipulated that a man had to have the decency to give the woman he sent away a proper legal document.  Well, the Pharisees of Jesus’ day also knew what our hardness of hearts is like.

But they tried the way-out of clever means – for a man to discard an unwanted wife.  Only a man could do that.  When the burden was too heavy for a woman, well, that was HER problem!  To them the woman indeed was a throw-away-thing, and they thought they could quote Moses to back them up.  Moses providing a handy “Biblical ground” for divorce: “….Hurray, there’s a text!  I can do it!….!”  And they had it down to a fine art.  You could divorce a woman – according to them – just for burning a meal.

But now the gospel tells us that Jesus came into this kind of world to save sinners, to save their marriages, to save their relationships.  The gospel is that people who were indeed throwaway people as far as God is concerned, all of them, the whole filthy lot, are for him, who became the Calvary-castaway, sheep to be brought home, home to God – with their marriage, with their work, their whole life, and to find new beginnings in His grace.  He comes to bring the kingdom where God alone is ruler.  He comes rising from the dead, to bring new life where we would have given up, and to teach hard-hearted flint-stones the new secret of self-denying love.  That is the way – the ONLY way! – you can read the New Testament, including Matthew 19, with its teaching on divorce and remarriage.  I am afraid that often before we know it we are again drawn into a Pharisee game of looking for loopholes, especially when we twist and turn, trying to get from Matthew 19 “Biblical grounds” for divorce.  Alas, I have often done this myself, too, when trying to help people who indeed were or seemed to be in a hopeless pickle.  “Biblical Grounds” – I have found it!  We say then: hurray, it’s all right in this case, you can do it, according to article umpteen clause so-and-so.  But really, when we look carefully, we see what we should have known all along: two things.

(1)  there are no biblical grounds at all for divorce,

(2)  also for this sin, however and after it, there is – upon repentance – forgiveness and new grace.

A)  NO BIBLICAL GROUNDS FOR DIVORCE

Jesus says; “Except for Fornication”, yes but He answers a question about MOSES allowing it, doesn’t he?  Now where and what does Moses say?  The only place where Moses’ Laws mention divorce and a “Letter” of divorce, is Deuteronomy 24 where we read:

When a man marries a wife and it happens that she finds no favour in his eyes BECAUSE HE HAS FOUND SOME INDECENCY IN HER he writes her a certificate of divorce and puts it in her hand and sends her out from his house…..!

You see that?  The reason, ground, Moses allows (and that only for the hardness of our hearts) to divorce a woman is that BEFORE HER MARRIAGE SHE HAS BEEN FOOLING AROUND.  A man MUST not divorce her for it but he MAY, the marriage was under false pretences.  Nowadays we call that kind of behaviour, “sleeping around”.  Men AND women may require of their future spouses that they be the FIRST, and they SHOULD require perfect honesty.  Yes, a woman may also require that from a man, because Jesus says here also that a MAN shall leave his father and his mother, CLEAVE UNTO HIS WIFE (that is: bind himself to her for life, make the vows that bind), and THEN they shall be one flesh.  This oft-repeated word from Genesis 2 is THE biblical evidence that God does NOT want sex before marriage, commitment first, and THEN: one flesh.  That’s how it works with human beings who are no mere beasts.  But says Moses: Oh those hard hearts!  Oh that stubborn sin!  Then it can be that after marriage a man discovers that his wife is not what she pretended to be.  She has been fornicating and made no clean break.  Then he may send her away.  Now if we compare old and new testaments, then this is clearly the “fornication” Jesus talks about.  He does not say: You may divorce on the grounds of adultery, the word is never even mentioned here (even though at times wrongly translated thus).  But it says “fornication”.

And he no doubt points at the situation in Moses’ law that the Pharisees were asking him about.  So He says: A woman once married cannot be discarded at will; neither can a man.  Marriage is for life.  The caring relationship between people is for keeps.  And even in the situation Moses talks about you do not HAVE to divorce…!  You CAN, That’s all.  Do you see what this means, brothers and sisters?  There are NO biblical grounds for divorce.  Grounds that could give anyone the reason to say he is right to divorce.  Whenever it does occur in a broken world, (and occur it does, alas, and sometimes it is even terribly and sadly unavoidable – as Paul says: keep as far as YOU can help it, peace with all men, but sometimes one cannot avoid that terrible clash) then the Christian will not run away and say self-righteously that he has a biblical ground.  Rather he will humble HIMSELF before God, and deeply repent that he could not keep the marriage together.  Maybe His sin was that He plunged into marriage too early, not looking out who the partner was before entering such a holy relationship.  Maybe his sin was that he – or hers that she – did not provide that warmth and service for the partner that would prevent him or her to wander off to others.  There may be many understandable circumstances Jesus also knows – how understanding He was to the Samaritan woman with her five husbands and one de facto!  How loving to the woman taken in adultery – but to her He says, “I forgive you, but now go and SIN no more!”  The hardness in human hearts has made terrible situations in human marriages, and God knows that.  But biblical grounds for divorce?  No..!  You see the point?  Then you are ready for the last point:

B) THERE ARE ALSO NO BIBLICAL GROUNDS FOR SAYING THERE CAN BE NO FORGIVENESS AND NEW BEGINNING….. where there has been repentance.

God wants no divorce.  But He does not want theft, lies, or slander either.  And just as the breakdown of a marriage can at times be so bad that it is already a divorce even though no judge has yet pronounced a verdict and then it seems to be irreparable.  Just as murder is irreparable and the burning of a house, or the blasphemy of God’s name, so can a marriage be irreparable.  It has broken and there are you, standing sadly at the ruins, repenting before God.  A Lord’s Day that you made a swearword instead of hallowing it before God never comes back.  But that does not mean there is no forgiveness!  If there is a so-called innocent party, a Christian sadly seeing the breakdown of his or her marriage but not wanting that breakdown, will not say here is the biblical ground.  He will turn to God in deep repentance.  He or she will say: Lord I have tried but I have failed.  I have not been able to rescue the relationship.  I have not been able to restore and hold on, Lord I am so sorry.  How the wound hurts of a broken home!  The children are deeply hurt by it.  The parties are left with a scar that never quite leaves them.  Abigail had an unhappy marriage.  In a way she was unfaithful too, because though she never left her husband, she no more could obediently respect him, either, could she?  But the Lord in His grace made for Abigail a new beginning.  David – later in his life forsook Abigail and Ahinoam, and Michal and Haggith and whoever more were his wives when he lusted after Bathsheba!  Deep was his sin and he truly repented.  And God gave him a new beginning even with Bathsheba whose very son was chosen to be King after David.  But that was not because somewhere clever lawyer minds found biblical grounds, but because rotten sinners found grace.  Even here, even an unfaithful bride or philandering bridegroom is no throw-away-article, says God.  Yes, it is hard to repair broken marriages.  No wonder the disciples look puzzled at Jesus, they know of unhappy marriages, too!  And they ask him, “Lord but then WHO can afford to be married!?”

Then Jesus speaks of things given by God which also are grace.  We see in His words, Jesus himself.  He stayed unmarried also to bear the lonely sins of those whose marriage broke, those who got caught in the bitterness of the sin of divorce He bore also those diseases, and also for that deep and biting iniquity was he bruised.  The Lamb of God that bore away all these sins.

Do you see what the Bible means my friend?  We live in an age that tries to do away with your conscience in these matters.  The Family Law Bill is right in that it does no longer just single out one particular ground for the breakdown of a marriage.  A man who is consistently cruel to his wife even though he never sleeps with another woman can break a marriage more than the weakling who falls into one night of lust and feels sorry afterwards.  But the family law bill is dead wrong where it takes divorce too much for granted and helps us to see it no longer as a sin Only he who learns to cry before God because of his sin can find new life in Jesus.  That new life can even mean a remarriage.  But oh, if we do not see the sin as sin, all we THEN do is prepare ourselves for a new round of disappointment, and the next divorce will be easier with all that callus on our conscience.

Divorce can begin long before any lawyers get involved with their dirty tug-of-war business.  It begins at home when we break faith and build walls instead of bridges.  Sometimes these walls become too high for us.  Only God can break them.  And also when through our hardness of hearts we have broken or allowed the other one to break down our marriage, then we have to seek (and we may expect) the gift of grace.  That gift is there also for those who want to begin anew in another marriage, who want to do that in repentance, who have learned, sadly, to see how great the power of sin can be.  If anyone, such a person should know that and be anything but rash to start with someone else.  If you do not allow yourself time there you only prove that you have learned nothing.  That is the way the bible speaks of the subject,

Faithfulness is always difficult, and we ALL sin against it.  We cannot afford to condemn people who fell here, as at times we did condemn such people in our circles.  But neither can we ever fall into the modern trap of saying: it is all right, it does not matter.  God wants no throw-away spouses.  What we can and must do is together go to him who is faithful, and who is willing to teach US faithfulness.  God is faithful.  Jesus is our faithful saviour.  He stuck to a sinful mankind that had nothing for him but a cross.  Lord, and I think of writing off my husband because he is too demanding?  But there ARE no biblical grounds for divorce.  There are no biblical grounds for sin even though the Lord knows our frailty.  For sin there is only the way of repentance.  As for Jesus – because of that sin there was only the terrible way of the cross, Oh, brothers and sisters, let us pray that in our marriages we earnestly seek to avoid needlessly spilling His holy blood,

Amen.