What God Thinks of Divorce
Selected Scriptures
I recently saw a book entitled The Death of the Family written by a British physician. He suggests that what we need to do in the world is to do away with the family. He says because the family is the primary conditioning device for a western imperialistic worldview. And if we're gonna get rid of that, we've gotta can the family.
You've probably heard of Kate Millett, who is very involved in the ERA kind of thing. And she's written a book called Sexual Politics. And she says the first thing that has to go is the family. We've got to get rid of the family unit because it is the basic unit of oppression in women.
Now this is a sampling of just tons of material coming out against the family. I recently had the opportunity in my church to preach a series on the family. One of the things that interested me was recently a series of articles came out written by Armand Nicholais, who is a very, very astute professor at Harvard Medical School. He is a psychiatrist, an M.D. He is well respected in the field of psychiatry and also as a Christian. And he wrote an article which was carried in Christianity Today indicating some of his viewpoints regarding the family. And he just reiterated everything I had said. Only you know with the Harvard Medical School and all of that, everybody is, "Wow." And they printed it, you know, and all of this kind of thing, and it basically the same.
And this is what he said. "Certain friends prevalent today will incapacitate the family, destroy its integrity, and cause its members to suffer such crippling emotional conflicts that they will become an intolerable burden to society. If any one factor influences the character development and emotional stability of an individual, it is the quality of the relationship he or she experiences as a child with both parents. Conversely, if people suffering from severe non-organic emotional illness have an experience in common, it is the absence of a parent through death, divorce, etcetera."
And he went on to say that divorce will create in the next generation mental illness more than any other single factor. It is gonna give us a legacy of problems in the future. Nicholais said that there are many things that create these trends toward the disruption of a whole person. And he listed these. "Number one, married women with children, working outside the home." He says, "My clinical experience indicates clearly that no woman with young children can do both at the same time without sacrificing either the quality of her work or the quality of her childcare. Further, the tendency for families to move frequently. 50% of the United States population has lived at a different address five years ago."
Another one, "the invasion of television into the home. One-fifth of the next generation 80 year old will be spent watching television. He'll spend a total of 4,000 days of his 80 years watching television. The lack of controls in our society, he says, are gonna result in deep moral confusion, no standards to live by. And thus people, because they don't have a standard, they don't know where to stop. They learn to be unable to control their impulses and that's why we have a rise in violent crimes and sexual perversity and homosexuality and whatever else."
And then he says another problem is a lack of communication in the home. And they did a study in a small United States town and they found out that the average father spends 37 seconds a day with his young child. No communication, 37 seconds, that's right. But he says, "The major cause - and these all are causes, but the major cause of the collapse of the next generation is gonna be divorce." He said, "The quick and easy trend toward divorce and the ever increasing divorce rate subject more and more children to physically and emotionally absent parents. The divorce rate has risen 700% in this century and continues to rise. There is now one divorce for every 1.8 marriages. Over a million children a year are involved in divorce cases, and 13 million children under 18 have one or both parents missing."
And he concludes, "What about the future? What can we expect if the trends continue? First, the quality of family life will continue to deteriorate producing a society with a higher incidence of mental illness than ever before. 95% of our hospital beds will be taken up by mentally ill people. It's devastating to a person to have no relationship in a family. This illness," he says, "Will be characterized primarily by a lack of self control. We can expect the assassination of people in authority to be frequent occurrences. Crimes of violence will increase, even those within the family. The suicide rate will rise, and as sexuality becomes more unlimited, more separated from family and emotional commitment, the deadening effect will cause more bizarre experimentation and widespread perversion."
That's what we're looking at in the next generation. It's a frightening picture. And what do we do about it? Well, we can talk about psychology and we can talk about putting band-aids on cancer and that type of thing, but what we really need to do is look at the Bible and find out what God has to say. And that's what I want us to do tonight.
So I want us to look at just two verses. Verse 31 of Matthew 5 and then verse 32. "It hath been said whosever shall put away his wife," and that's a Greek word meaning divorce, "Let him give her a writing of divorcement. But I say unto you that whosoever shall divorce his wife except for the cause of sexual sin causes her to commit adultery, and whoever marries her that is divorce commits adultery."
Now strangely enough, this simple statement of Jesus has caused an awful lot of confusion. And when we want answers to what is right and what is wrong in divorce, we simply need to go to the word of God and take our time to unfold what Jesus is saying here. If we had Jewish background like the hearers did that day, it would have been very simple to understand. You know, one of the things a Bible teacher has to do is close gaps. This is what we call the science of Hermanudics. You've gotta close some gaps. In order for you to interpret the Bible, you've got to close some gaps.
For example, you have a language gap. The Bible was written in Hebrew and Greek and we have it in English. You have a history gap. That is there was something going on historically then that isn't going on now. We've got to reconstruct it. You have a culture gap. You have a geography gap. You have all of those factors that separate us from the people to whom these things were written and we've got to reconstruct the scene. So what's gonna take a little time is for you to understand what they were thinking when Jesus said that and how simply His words unfold.
Now there are many people today who are giving us answers about divorce. Some people are saying, "No divorce no time for nobody under no circumstances." Others are saying, "Yes there is divorce, but no remarriage. You can get a divorce, but you can never remarry anytime under any circumstances." Then other people are saying, "Divorce for anybody anytime and remarriage for anybody anytime." That's the other extreme. And then there are some saying, "Yes, there is divorce and there is remarriage, but not for anything and only for special things." And so you've got those who say, "No divorce anytime." Some say, "Divorce, but no remarriage." Some say, "Divorce and remarriage all the time." Some say, "Divorce and remarriage, but only some of the time."
And invariably, you read books and you will find all these varying views. And I am saying that to say it's not an easy subject. But I think where most of the people fail is in really reconstructing the setting of what's going on. And it seems to me that Jesus words just simply unfold very simply to us. You've got to understand this.
In verse 31 there's a little phrase. "It has been said." This is a code all through the Sermon on the Mount. You see it in verse 21. "You have heard that it was said." Verse 27. "You have heard that it was said." Verse 31. "It has been said." Verse 33. "You have heard that it was said." Verse 38. "You have heard that it was said." Verse 43. "You have heard that it was said." Where did they hear this? This was the common traditional Rabenek system that they had established. This is not necessarily the Old Testament, although in most cases they took it out of the Old Testament and kind of twisted it around to fit their own situation.
And so what he's saying is, "This is what you have been taught." On the other hand, verse 32 begins, "But I say unto you." So Jesus, first of all, is saying, "Here is your view and then here is My view." And so He is playing off where they were at. And it's very important to understand that. And we understand that the Lord is really dealing with them in terms of their own system. Now, I think it goes without saying that marriage of sacred, right? I don't have time tonight to go all the way back to Genesis and reconstruct Genesis too, how God made two one and talk about all of that. But you know that God invented marriage as a sacred thing, right?
They too are to become what? One flesh. And from the very beginning God's intention was monogamous lifelong marriage, and indivisible oneness. One cannot be divided. And they became one and it was indivisible, monogamous, lifelong marriage. And that is why our Lord said in Matthew 19 when they asked Him, "Well, what about a bill of divorcement?" And He said to them, "But from the beginning it was not so. Wherefore let no man put asunder what God has put together." And by the way, the Greek work put asunder means divorce. "Let no man divorce what God has put together."
From the beginning God wanted monogamous marriage. In fact, anything that violated marriage was just a serious issue. Did you know that if you committed sexual sin as a non-married person, the punishment was different than if you committed it as a married person? That's right. If you committed, for example, you had a sexual relationship with somebody before you were either married - either of you were married, there was a certain judgment, but it was not death. But if you committed adultery outside of marriage, you died, stoned, according to Deuteronomy 22.
Why? Because the marriage institution itself was so sacred that sinning against that covenant carried a greater judgment than sex sin among single people. That doesn't mean that that's right. It doesn't mean that it's a good thing to do that. It just means that it's much more serious when marriage is involved. God did everything He could possibly do to protect marriage. He said, "If you do commit adultery," and this was the way it was laid out in Deuteronomy 22, the punishment is death. That was to be a deterrent. That would be a fairly severe deterrent.
Not only that, did you know that when they built the tabernacle in the temple and it talks about it in Exodus 20, they were not to put the alter up any stairs because in those days they wore a certain kind of a skirt and God wanted to make sure that when people went up the stairs nobody down below saw their nakedness. And you know, in 2 Samuel 10, some Jewish people were humiliated when their enemies came and cut their clothes, cut their robes right off just below their rear ends. They had also shaved their beards, and of course, a beard was a sign of dignity. But to go around with your tale hanging out, you know, in our society today, that's just, you know, part of the act.
But in those days you wouldn't do that. Why? Because God was protecting from the look that leads to adultery as much as was possible within the society. 2 Samuel 10 talks about that. Polygamy was forbidden in Leviticus 18. So God was building everything he could around the marriage to sanctify and to try to hold on to that because He knew it was gonna fly apart if man was given his own way.
God established marriage as a spiritual, sexual, social union of two people for life. It was always that way from the very beginning. And so the first reality you have to understand is that one. It's very simple. I don't have time to really go into it Biblically, but I just want to lay it out.
Now I want you to look with me for just a minute at Malachi. It's the last book of the Old Testament, one book to the left of Matthew. And you remember that in Malachi 2:16, here God is indicting the children of Israel for divorce. Verse 14 says, "They were dealing treacherously against their wives. They were unheeding the cheers and the agonizing cries of their wives, who were trying to hang on to a marriage." They were just putting their wives away turning a deaf ear to their sorrow. And verse 16, "For the Lord the God of Israel says he hates divorce." He hates it. "'For one covers violence with his garment,' saith the Lord of Hosts. Therefore take heed to your spirit that you deal not treacherously." Uses pretty vivid language.
He says, "A man who puts away his wife or vice versa garments himself with violence." In other words, sometimes you can catch a criminal because he has the evidence on himself. I'll never forget a situation that happened some years ago when I got involved in attempted murder. And I was in the church and there was two guys who were beating up a fellow in the church parking lot. And so I ran out, you know, to try to stop the fight. And of course I was - you know, I don't even know what to do. I was a local minister and the secretary said, "There's a fight out there. You better go stop it, you know." So I felt like I had a civic duty and I went out there. And I saw these two guys, they had a guy on the ground and they were just kicking him, just pummeling his body with their feet. I found out later they were professional rugby players, or at least they were semi-professional rugby players who also worked at Stevadors.
You know, they weren't real swift upstairs, you know. But they were brutes. They had long police records. Anyway, they had - somehow this guy had irritated them. They didn't know him. He was just walking down the street and they started shouting obscenities at his and he said something back and they decided to kill him. Well I thought it was a fight and I yelled out them, "Break up the fight." And they didn't do anything. And a crowd was gathering in the corner, so I thought I better walk over, you know. The closer I got, the bigger they got. They were monstrous guys.
I always said I'd fight anybody smaller than me who's had a recent illness. But, you know, get in over my head. So I got out there and I said, "Break it up." And I heard this guy say, "Kill him. Kill him." And there was blood all over everywhere. His face was mangled and distorted. His nose was bleeding. His mouth was all bleeding. His teeth were knocked out. They had blood all over their pants. And so I really didn't know what to do at that point. The biggest guy turned toward me and started after me, kind of a - you know, I kept going backwards, you know. He kept coming after me and I went backwards. And finally I got to the church door. I figured I'd jump in and go, "King's X, you know."
But anyway, I got back to the church door and I jumped back in and he came right in. You know, the nerve. And he came right in the church and all of this. Finally, we were able to get the police out there and by this time they had made a getaway and the police caught them. I'll never forget what the police guy said. I said, "How'd you find them?" He said, "Well, we tracked them to their residence. We went in, we found blood all over their clothes, so we knew it was them." Blood all over their clothes, that's exactly what Malachi's saying.
When you divorce your wife, you've got blood all over your clothes just like somebody who kills. See, that's how serious God viewed divorce. He covers his garments with violence. And so I just point out those Scriptures from Genesis to Malachi, from the first part of the Bible to the last book of the Old Testament, God's view never changes. God hates divorce. And so He is consistent all the way through.
It's very important that you understand that because there are people who teach that the Old Testament teaches divorce. It doesn't and I'll show you why. What has happened, if God has this beautiful, glorious picture of two people living together for their lifelong period of time and God hates divorce, what messed it up? Let's go back to Genesis 3 and find out.
Genesis 3. Now you know that before the situation in Genesis 3, when sin entered the world everything was blissful. Everything was wonderful. And then of course, Eve fell to temptation. She induced Adam into the same kind of a deal. And they both fell into temptation. And immediately there came a curse. And I don't know if you really understand that curse because not a lot of people understand it. But I want to show you something.
Everything involved in this sin got cursed. Verse 14 of Genesis 3. "And the Lord God said unto the serpent," who had done the tempting, of course Satan had used the serpent as his instrument of approach. "Because thou has done this, thou are cursed of all cattle, of every beast of the field on the ______ belly shalt thou go and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life." The serpent was cursed. "I will put amity between thee and the woman." And here is the curse of Satan himself.
"And between thy seed and her seed, he shall bruise thy head and thou shall bruises heal." And here, of course, you have Satan being cursed. Satan who attacked man and temptation will be by man defeated. By one man, in fact, the man Jesus Christ. The only time a woman ever had a seed. The seed is otherwise in the man. So Satan himself is cursed in verse 15. The snake is cursed in verse 14. And then we find in verse 16 the man and the woman are cursed.
"Under the woman," he said, "I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception. In sorrow thou shall bring forth children." And the first part of the curse is that a woman would have pain in childbearing. That is a part of the curse. And further, and watch this one. "Thy desire shall be to thy husband and he shall rule over thee."
Now people do not understand that. They say, "Well that means that from now on the woman would desire her husband." No. She always desired her husband. That isn't anything new. In fact, it was prior to the fall that that desire was pure and uncluttered. Although they were in a sense coregents in the created world, and although they ruled together and had dominion together, the husband was always the head and you find that reiterated again and again in the Scripture.
And her desire had always been toward her husband. Then in what sense is this a curse? Well, people don't understand that. It's got to be something different than what it was. In what sense is the woman's desire toward her husband? I want you to notice something here. The Hebrew word for desire and the Hebrew word for rule. The word for rule is massal in Hebrew. And it is a different word than the word used in Genesis 1:28 when it says, "They rule together." When they rule together, the word rule there has a difference connotation. The word here means and it says, "He shall rule over thee." It is a word that means to be set in an elevated position.
They used to rule together before the fall. There was a co regency, even though the man was the stronger vessel, as Peter implies. And even though the man had headship, they had such a beautiful knitting together of the roles that they ruled together. And by the way, that can only be restored in Jesus Christ. And in Christ, you don't have this kind of relationship, you have this kind, only each knows his place and in each place they rule together.
But you see when the fall came, you got another word. They don't rule together. It's not the same word. All of the sudden the man finds himself elevated into a place of authority. Now this is just part of the curse. "He shall rule over you." People say to me, "Well, you know, is the Bible against women? Does the Bible teach male chauvinism?" No, not any more than anything else that's sinful. I agree that all throughout history women have been abused by men. I agree that men have been chauvinistic. I agree that men have dominated women. I agree that men have oppressed women. I agree that men have pushed women down. I agree with all of that, and I see it start right here.
"He shall elevate himself in a position over you." That's part of the curse. But you see the other side of it. "Thy desire shall be to thy husband." Now what does that mean? Well, this is equally important for us. The word desire is chuka. Now what's interesting about this is this is usually made to refer to sexual desire, but it doesn't have that meaning. This word is only used one other time in the whole Pentituke, the five books of Moses, and only one other time in the whole Bible. But only one other time in the Pentituke and that is just a few verses later in chapter 4 verse 7.
Now whenever you see the same Hebrew word used in the same