Following in the Footsteps of Jesus: Honour Marriage

Posted on Jun 21, 2009 in Sermons | Comments Off

Speaker: Andrew Brown
Key Passage: Matthew 5:27-32
Date: 21 June 2009

If you were going to change the world, where would you start?  If we made you the boss of the whole world, where would you begin?

When we were kids we used to play a game called ‘Czar’ where we would say, “If I was the King of the World for a day, this is what I would do” -and then we would rattle off all kinds of changes that we would like to make in the world.  Usually it was really big stuff like no homework, longer holidays and no punishment! (Yes, life was simple then).  But perhaps you’ve noticed that politicians occasionally play the same kind of game.  It’s called the “First hundred days.” Barack Obama for example predicted that within his first hundred days of Presidency that he would act to rescue the US economy, make climate change a priority, reduce healthcare costs, close Guantanomo Bay, end US torture, step up military activity in Afghanistan, make plans to get out of Iraq, make peace with Iran, make the Middle East the top US foreign policy priority, and free the world from nuclear weapons.  PM John Key was perhaps more modest.  He only promised to bring in 27 new policies in his first 100 days, most of them aimed I think at alleviating the effects of the global economic crisis.  So if you were the Czar of the whole world, what would you do? Where would you start to make the world right?

Well in the winter of 28AD Jesus Christ sits down in front of a waiting crowd in Capernaum, northern Israel and announces His programme for a brand new society based upon a radical return to God’s values.  Jesus pictures a world where those who mourn over the state of the planet will be comforted, where those who are gentle will govern, where those who hunger and thirst for justice and purity will be satisfied, where the merciful will be shown mercy, where those loyal will see God, and where peacemakers who share the good news of Jesus will be called “sons and daughters of God.” Jesus paints the big picture, His ‘dream’ or vision, and then outlines six things that will be done differently wherever His vision is being lived out.

The first thing He says is that human beings will treat each other with greater dignity.  Instead of people thinking they can just about get away with anything short of murder, they will be very cautious about how and why they get angry.  They will treat each other properly.  The second and third changes He wants to make concern the relationship between the two largest groups of people in the world.  Can you think who they are?  [Pause] Yes, the second and third changes are all about the relationship between the sexes -between men and women.

Jesus goal is to change the relationship between men and women because let’s face it we haven’t done so well, have we? When you think about it, what’s the scorecard on this issue? Clearly men and women like each other.  Many of us have got friends amongst the opposite sex.  There are people that we respect and admire.  Between men and women good friendships form.  We work well together.  67% of all marriages will last for a lifetime.

But on the other hand the statistics are pretty daunting. We haven’t been very kind to each other. For instance 33% of all marriages end in divorce.  1 in 10 kids will grow up in a single parent family.  Some surveys rank Kiwi women as the most promiscuous in the world, while New Zealand men only run third, but are still churning through the sexual partners well ahead of the world average.  Might be because 51% of us apparently watch pornography. I don’t know. We are also in the top 5 (actually we are number 3) for unplanned pregnancies in ‘rich counties ‘between the ages of 17-18, and it has been reported that 1-in-4 New Zealand girls receive unwanted sexual attention before the age of 15, the highest rate of any country so far examined. Getting away from sex, in the year ended 30 June 2006 the Family Court made 2,400 final protection orders. Approximately 6,700 children were involved in applications for protection orders during the same period. 17,773 women and 12,161 children used Women’s Refuge services, CYF’s recorded 49,063 reports of abuse requiring further action, and Police records show that 48% of murders in 2006 were related to family violence. 15,068 family violence assaults were recorded. Over 30,000 people were affected. Shirley Jülich estimated that the cost of child sexual abuse in New Zealand alone in 2004 was $2.6 billion. Do you really want to hear any more?  You can look it all up on the Internet.  Maybe it all goes back to the original argument between Adam and Eve, but clearly we haven’t done very well as a nation.  The relationship between the sexes looks more like ‘the battle of the sexes.’ And Jesus wants to heal this tragic rift, and so He proposes two basic remedies.

1. His first piece of advice is to clean up your act, or more specifically to clean up your thoughts. This is what He tells the crowd. I know that it sounds a bit blunt, but there’s an old Jewish saying that if a Rabbi is any good there will be times when people will want to drive him away.  This might be one of them.  Jesus tells the crowd to do some inner housework.

The thing is that in Jesus time there were very set rules about how men and women were to relate.  The Pharisees had a whole myriad of little rules to avoid any kind of ‘trouble.’ It was not considered right, for instance, to gaze upon a beautiful woman, even if she was unmarried, another man’s wife, or even if she was deformed.  Men weren’t supposed to look at woman’s coloured clothing, and they were forbidden from even looking at a woman’s little finger.  Ankles were also strictly out, and even if a man met His own wife in the street she should not walk ahead of him. Apparently you weren’t allowed to look upon the beauty of your own wife. Not that you would have seen much anyway because she was supposed to wear a double veil while outside.  Talking to another woman other than a man’s wife or child was also considered inappropriate.

Now some people thought that if you kept all these little rules then you were doing okay.  You could say, “I’ve kept the commandments,” but what Jesus does though is that He cuts right to the spiritual heart of the problem.  He cuts to the chase, which is all about people’s inner motives. He reminds them of the seventh Commandment (Exodus 20:14), which is do not commit adultery (that is do not have sex with anyone outside of marriage). However He adds “I tell you that anyone who simply looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.”  In other words if you break the tenth commandment, which is do not covet, do not hanker after something that someone else has, while looking at a man or woman, then you have also broken the seventh commandment as well, which is do not commit adultery.

In a sense what Jesus is asking is, ‘what is the root of all these problems between you?’ Part of His answer is lust.  For those of you who don’t know what ‘lust’ is, it is a form of greed. It is a very strong desire or craving that is almost entirely self-centred and often treats people as objects of fantasy to satisfy their appetites.  It’s different to admiring beauty.  We can all admire a strong arm or a pretty face.  But it’s when we begin to dream about and even to act in such a way that we use the other person for what we can get out of them that it becomes lust.  It’s majors on meeting my wants and my needs at my convenience.  In fact lust can be a terrible vortex.  It can be like a whirlpool that sucks other people’s lives, individuals and whole families, down into your life, where you use and even destroy them simply so that you can feel a little bit better about yourself.  Jesus Himself says that lust can lead to all manner of hell and many of you have been there.  We should all be very afraid, very afraid.

Therefore Jesus says if your right eye (your best eye) causes you to stumble or to lust, then pluck it out.  If your right hand (your best hand) causes you to reach out and touch what it shouldn’t, better to cut it off too.  It’s far better for you to lose one part of your body then to suffer the consequences of lust.  As 1 Cor. 6:18 says, “Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a man commits are outside his body, but he who sins sexually sins against his own body.”

Now Jesus is not literally meaning that you should self-mutilate your body, but what He does mean is that your greed must be dealt with vigorously or it will eventually destroy you and others.  What you need to do is to destroy the roots of lust by cleaning up your thoughts! “For out of the heart” He says in Matthew 15:19, “come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander.” You need to serious about avoiding lust and clean up your life, Jesus says. Do not play with lust and let it develop. Starve it.  Find a way of dealing with it.  Do whatever it takes.  Be entirely one eyed about this.  Get free of the curse of lust, which is a root of the problem between us. Clean up your thought life.

2. The next thing He says though is to protect and respect marriage. Jesus sees this as a second key to peace between the sexes.  He says that we all need to have a very high opinion of marriage.  Do you have that today?

The thing is that in Jesus day society had reached the stage where men considered divorce no big deal, even though it usually doomed the woman to poverty.  If a man wanted to divorce his wife he simply gave her a piece of paper, a certificate of divorce and sent her away.  It was like disposing of property.  The purpose of the divorce certificate was to allow the marriage to end if necessary, but also to send the woman away with some dignity.  That way she wasn’t simply abandoned in the street at two seconds notice.  She could also prove that she hadn’t committed adultery, which meant that she was eligible to remarry.  This was often the only way that she could get a new income –from a new husband.  So divorce was actually a concession to protect a woman and her good name.

But what Jesus seems to suggest is that there is no compassionate form of divorce. Divorce always victimises someone.  In this case Jesus says that the man who divorces his wife causes her and her new husband to become adulterers when they remarry so there is a special portion of blame that now attaches to him!  The man who prompts the divorce is creating evil, and as Jesus so strongly states to his disciples in Luke 17:1 “Things that cause people to sin are bound to come, but woe to that person through whom they come!”

Now the point here is not to look at whether re-marriage is right or not –that’s a whole different discussion that we can have some day.  Rather it’s simply to say that you cannot take marriage or divorce lightly.  You cannot think “There.  I’m doing you a favour.  Now push off,” because it wrecks everyone, including the person who pushes for the divorce.  Let’s not kid ourselves here, says Jesus. Divorce hurts. Divorce destroys.  In fact if you genuinely wish to look after your own and your husband’s or wife’s best interests, you will actually remain married to them, not give them a certificate of divorce.

3. Which leads on the third insight that Jesus gives (much later on) which is to soften our hearts. In Matthew 19 Jesus is questioned by the Pharisees about this same business of divorce.  You can look it up in chapter 19:7-8.  Jesus is asked, “Why did Moses command that a man give his wife a certificate of divorce and send her away?” Can anyone remember what Jesus replies? “Jesus replied, “Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard.”

In this setting Jesus is suggesting that divorce is evidence of moral failure, i.e. it is often the result of hard hearts.  These might be hard hearts that resist God’s will for a marriage, or it might be a hard heart towards a spouse –a heart that will not change, that will not compromise, that will not work with another, that will not forgive or forget.  Divorce therefore is ultimately allowed in order to protect one spouse from the hardheartedness of the other. It’s to prevent further serious damage from happening, but do you know what?

Hearts can change. Hearts can be changed.  That’s the miracle!  John Burke told us yesterday about a couple who came to their church.  They weren’t followers of Jesus, but they felt they needed to be there so they came along.  They were invited to a home group that meet during the week.  There they made friends and eventually they were both baptised.  It was only after about 8 months that they let on that they had both arrived at the church on the verge of divorce.  However when they came to the home group, had seen the different way that Christians treat each other and understood their values, it had given them hope.  They thought, “Hey, maybe we can change our marriage.  Hey, maybe we can change ourselves.” I think you all know that marriage isn’t about finding the right person to marry.  It’s about being the right person to marry.  They discovered that truth and as a result their hearts softened towards each other, they were able to work though their problems together and now they are going on strongly as a married couple.  I guess it just goes to show that our own hearts can be softened if we wish them to be, and this is the direction in which the Lord seems to point.

4. Anyway, what does this all have to say to us today? I guess it’s not the whole story on men and women, but we do need to think about Jesus words don’t we.  Our past is gone, and what’s there can be and must be forgiven, but where do you stand today?

Do I need to clean up my thought life?

Do I need to respect and protect marriage, if I’m married?

Do I need to soften my heart towards my spouse?

I think that the Lord has had enough of men and women hurting each other, hurting themselves and hurting Him as well. Sometimes when God looks at our planet it must look like we are all devouring each other, and imagine how that feels for Him. As Christ’s people we need to take practical steps that will lead towards wholeness and healing.  We need to be a part of the rebuilding of society. So will you join Him?

As Jesus disciples:

1. Will you practise sexual purity?  Throw out the pornography?  Get married if you’re living together?  Stop ogling so much?  In particular clean up your thought life.

2. Will you respect God’s plan and intention for marriage?  Value marriage highly.  Marry if you can and want to.  Do not commit adultery.  Ideally do not divorce.  Above all do not take marriage lightly.

3. And for those of you who are married, will you seek to soften your hearts?  Maybe you need to have another look at your spouse and see the good qualities in them.  Maybe you need support and prayer, but have hearts, eyes and arms only for them.

Will you play your part in the grand scheme of things?  If not for yourself, then for the sake of others? After all this is the Lord’s plan.  He wants to heal the rift, but we must play our part.  Remember “There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus (Gal 3:28).”