Series

"And if anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to be thrown into the sea with a large millstone tied around his neck. [43] If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life maimed than with two hands to go into hell, where the fire never goes out. [45] And if your foot causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life crippled than to have two feet and be thrown into hell. [47] And if your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into hell, [48] where 'their worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched.'”

Jesus then left that place and went into the region of Judea and across the Jordan. Again crowds of people came to him, and as was his custom, he taught them.

[2] Some Pharisees came and tested him by asking, "Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?"

[4] They said, "Moses permitted a man to write a certificate of divorce and send her away."

[5] "It was because your hearts were hard that Moses wrote you this law," Jesus replied. [6] "But at the beginning of creation God 'made them male and female.' [7] 'For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, [8] and the two will become one flesh.' So they are no longer two, but one. [9] Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate."

[10] When they were in the house again, the disciples asked Jesus about this. [11] He answered, "Anyone who divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery against her. [12] And if she divorces her husband and marries another man, she commits adultery."

You know, I love to preach through books of the Bible, as I am doing with Mark’s gospel, and I hate to preach through books of the Bible. Here’s why: this morning we have two passages, dealing with hell and divorce, and if it were up to me, I’d just as soon skip these. But this is one of the “benefits” of preaching through a book of the Bible—it forces us to deal with passages that we might otherwise ignore. It is important that we hear everything God has to say to us, even when it is not pleasant. I delayed preaching on these topics last week, because I didn’t think they were appropriate for the Sunday of our congregational meeting. And I have combined the two of them into one sermon, just because they are so awful I couldn’t bear to spend two weeks on them. That means that I will not have time to say everything there is to say about each of these two topics, but at least I can hit the high points.

So here we go. First, divorce. Let me say right up front that I have a great deal of compassion for those who have been divorced. Divorce is worse than death, because there is always some element of guilt or blame in it, there are any number of things that continue to pick the scab off the wound on your heart, the psychological damage it does to both parties, and to their kids, and their parents, and even to their friends, is huge. The Bible is very strong in its condemnation of divorce, but that is only because God loves us so much and wants to spare us all that pain. Our culture has come to the terrible place of accepting and even expecting divorce, but that is not God’s plan, and it is not good for us.

The other thing that needs to be said up front is that divorce is not the unforgivable sin. It is horrible, it is devastating, it is not God’s will, but the death of Christ is sufficient to pay for even this. His grace covers all our sin. So we do not condemn or ostracize divorced persons, or treat them like second class citizens. Rather, we grieve with them at the brokenness and pain they have experienced, even if it was their own fault.

A. Background to the question: “something indecent” Mark 10:2; Dt 24:1-4 / Mt 19:3ff;

The Pharisees come to Jesus with this question, Mark 10:2,“Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?” [3] "What did Moses command you?" he replied. [4] They said, "Moses permitted a man to write a certificate of divorce and send her away." The question they ask hinges on a debate among the theologians of Jesus' day over the interpretation of Deuteronomy 24:1, where Moses said that if a woman “becomes displeasing to [her husband] because he finds something indecent about her,” he could write her a certificate of divorce and send her away. The school of Rabbi Hillel maintained the liberal view that the words "something indecent" should be interpreted to mean "anything the husband did not like about his wife." Rabbi Shammai and his followers thought this phrase should be limited to marital infidelity.

In response, Jesus says, Mark 10:5, "It was because your hearts were hard that Moses wrote you this law," Jesus replied. Yes, there is provision for divorce in the Old Testament law, but the only reason for that was because of the hardness of men’s hearts. Moses gave permission to divorce a woman as a merciful gesture toward the woman. A woman was often stuck in an impossible situation. Many times, husbands were unwilling to work on the relationship, but they kept their wives around to gratify their sexual needs. This put the woman in the dilemma of either staying in the marriage and suffering for the rest of her life, or of leaving her husband and laying herself open to the charge of adultery if she remarried. The effect of Moses' permission to grant a divorce was to set a woman in this situation free to remarry, since she carried with her the certificate of divorce, thereby proving that she was no longer married to her first husband.

Plan “A” was for permanent marriage. Mark 10:6, "But at the beginning of creation God 'made them male and female.' [7] 'For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, [8] and the two will become one flesh.' So they are no longer two, but one. [9] Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate."

Marriage is not just a legal contract; it is not just a social convention; it is an act of God. In a marriage, God takes two individuals, and makes them one new unit in His sight. They are now “a couple”. And God’s intention for every couple who marries is that they should stay married to each other as long as they are both alive. God has put them together, made them one, and no human being should undo that.

In Matthew’s account of this situation with the Pharisees, Jesus goes on from where Mark leaves off to acknowledge that sometimes, this union breaks down. Matthew 19:8-9, "Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard. But it was not this way from the beginning. [9] I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for marital unfaithfulness, and marries another woman commits adultery." He phrases it in the context of the prohibition: you should not divorce. If you do and then you remarry, you are committing adultery, because in God’s sight, you are still married to your first spouse. But there is one exception given in which divorce is permissible, namely unfaithfulness, which is usually interpreted to mean adultery.[1] So we can say with confidence that Jesus endorses this one legitimate reason for divorce.

But not all divorces end for this reason. Many of them unravel for other reasons. What shall we say about them? Are they all wrong? Is this the only valid reason for divorce? The question we have to ask about this passage is this: Was Jesus being definitive here, or illustrative? That is, was He giving the complete definition of legitimate divorce, or was He illustrating the kind of thing that can be grounds for divorce?

We get a hint of the answer when we look at Paul’s writings on this subject in 1 Corinthians. 1 Cor. 7:12-13, “…If any brother has a wife who is not a believer and she is willing to live with him, he must not divorce her. [13] And if a woman has a husband who is not a believer and he is willing to live with her, she must not divorce him…15 But if the unbeliever leaves, let him do so. A believing man or woman is not bound in such circumstances; God has called us to live in peace.”

Paul here speaks to the situation of a spiritually mixed marriage, where the unbeliever wants to leave the believer. He says that would be permissible, and the believer is not bound in that situation, but is free to remarry.

Now if Jesus was being definitive, and not illustrative, when He gave unfaithfulness as the only valid ground for divorce, then it does not matter that Paul spoke to a different situation--he has added another ground for divorce that Jesus did not allow. If we are going to take both Jesus and Paul seriously, and not charge Paul with contradicting Jesus, then I think we have to say that Jesus was not being definitive in Matthew 19, but was rather citing unfaithfulness as the kind of thing that it takes to break the marriage union. He was saying, marriage cannot and should not be dissolved as easily as writing on a slip of paper, "I am not her husband and she is not my wife." It takes something as serious as adultery to dissolve that bond.

If that’s what Jesus meant, then Paul is improvising on Jesus' words when he encounters a new ethical situation that Jesus did not speak to directly, namely a spiritually mixed marriage in which the unbeliever leaves. Paul extrapolates from the fact that a believer and a non-believer are two fundamentally different kinds of people (2 Cor 6:14-16), and from an understanding of adultery as the kind of thing that breaks the marriage bond, and says that desertion by an unbeliever is the same kind of thing, and therefore the believer is free to let him/her go.

The Bible does not directly address all possible ethical situations. In those cases which are not specifically addressed, we have to improvise as best we can, extrapolating from applicable principles to arrive at some tentative conclusions on how to operate. We do this, for example, with marriage ceremonies, funerals, ordination ceremonies, baptism, communion, etc. (none of which are specifically spelled out in Scripture), and with a whole host of ethical questions that did not even exist at the time the Scripture was written, like genetic engineering, fertility technology, abortion, etc.

My position is that in Mark 10, Matthew 19, and other passages, Jesus’ statements have the nature of a general reiteration of the original goal for marriage. He was not intending to give a comprehensive, exhaustive ethic for marriage and divorce. When He mentioned porneia, "marital unfaithfulness", as the only grounds for divorce, He was speaking illustratively, not definitively or exhaustively. He was giving an illustration of the kind of thing that it takes to break the marriage bond, and saying that it had to be much more serious than just not liking something about one's wife. Therefore, we may have to improvise in light of the ideal when we encounter particular marital situations not covered by any biblical statements.

I think this approach captures the spirit of both the Old Testament and the New Testament in this way: In the Old Testament, Moses gave permission for a divorce as a merciful provision for women because of the hardness of men’s hearts. It is certainly true today that the hardness of people’s hearts toward their spouse is the underlying reason for all divorces. As tragic as that is, we need to make a similar merciful provision for the spouse who is trapped in such a marriage.

In the New Testament, Jesus says in a different context that the law was made for man, not man for the law. That is to say, God gives us His laws for our benefit, not to harm us. Based on that principle, Jesus allowed His men to “break” the prohibition against work on the Sabbath and pick grain.[2] Based on that same principle, we should apply the principles of Scripture related to marriage and divorce in such a way as to work for the benefit of those who are in impossible situations.

If we follow this approach to the question of how God views divorce, we have to guard against too lax and subjective a view of what constitutes an irreparable break in the marriage bond. We need some careful safeguards to protect the Biblical ideal. To say divorce may be permitted in some situations is a very different thing from saying that a couple in those situations should divorce.

I hope you understand that I am not trying to make divorce easier. The Bible is clear on the ideal of permanent marriage, and we want to uphold that in every way possible. We must consider divorce only as an absolutely last resort. If we appear to make divorce an easy option, many people will take that option long before they should, and many marriages which could have been saved will be prematurely lost.

But we have to find a way to uphold the Biblical ideal while providing a framework for dealing with situations not specifically covered in Scripture. For example, what is the status of the marriage of minors? Or marriage contracted while under the influence of alcohol or drugs? What is the status of a marriage if one mate deceives the other about a matter absolutely fundamental to a real and happy marriage such as homosexuality? Is a terrible case of alcoholism a valid basis for divorce? Or wife-abuse? Or sexual addiction and pornography? These are all situations the Bible does not specifically address.

Get an objective opinion To help deal with some of these terribly knotty questions, there should be at least one other outside opinion as to the extent of damage being done to the partner or to the marriage bond. This opinion should be given by a mature Christian with some experience in marriage counseling, not a friend who will always take your side. This kind of decision is too heavily loaded with emotional baggage for the person involved in it to be at all objective, and we need to guard against decisions being made on the basis of the panic-stricken cry, "I can't take it any longer!" But if an outside party (or two) agrees that irreparable harm has been done to the marriage union, and that to stay in the relationship would work to the detriment of the partner seeking counsel or their children, then we may have to consider another alternative.

As I said, there is much more to be said about divorce; it’s a very difficult subject; but that’s a start. I also know that my position is different from that of many other Christian pastors and teachers, but I believe I have been faithful to the Scripture in coming to this view. For further reading, see the EPC Position Paper on Divorce and Remarriage at the web address on your outline: http://www.epc.org/about-epc/documents/DivorceandRemarriage_000.pdf

You know the phrase, “war is hell”. It’s a feeble attempt to describe just how horrible war is. I’ve titled this sermon “Divorce Is (Not) Hell”, because divorce is terrible for everyone affected by it, and those who go through it uniformly feel like it is hell, but it is not nearly as terrible as the real hell, as we shall see.

Mark 9:42, "And if anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to be thrown into the sea with a large millstone tied around his neck. [43] If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life maimed than with two hands to go into hell, where the fire never goes out. [45] And if your foot causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life crippled than to have two feet and be thrown into hell. [47] And if your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into hell, [48] where 'their worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched.'”

The first thing to say about this is that Jesus is using hyperbole; He is exaggerating to make a point. Unfortunately, some Christians who were very serious about their sin, but not very good interpreters of the Bible, have taken Jesus literally here, and actually cut off their hand, or gouged out their eyes, when they felt like those parts of their body were the cause of their sin. Let me say it as clearly as I can, so that none of you make this mistake: Jesus does not want you to maim yourself. Men, probably all of us have sinned with our eyes, lingering too long on a woman or an image that we should not have been looking at. This does not mean you should gouge out your eye. Even if you were addicted to pornography, you should not mutilate yourself.

The point Jesus is making is in the comparison: hell is so bad, that it would be better to go to heaven maimed than to go to hell with your body intact. But that is not the alternative: the biblical alternative is to confess our sins and receive God’s forgiveness.

B. Hell = eternal consequences for sin 2 Chron. 28:3; 33:6; Jeremiah 7:31; 19:2-6; Rev. 19:20; 20:10, 14-15

The second thing we need to say about this passage is that there are consequences for sin. Some of those are eternal, and the point of the passage is that the eternal consequences for sin are far worse than even very severe physical punishment.

The English Bible uses the word “hell” for those consequences, but this word translates several Greek and Hebrew words in the original. The Greek word Jesus uses here and in many other places is gehenna. It’s a word that transliterates a Hebrew word that means the Valley of Hinnom. This was a deep, narrow gorge outside[3] Jerusalem, where some of the idolatrous Jews in the Old Testament burned their children in sacrifice to the Canaanite deity Molech (the references in 2 Chronicles and Jeremiah are on your outline.) This valley afterwards became the city dump for Jerusalem. It’s where they would throw the dead bodies of animals and criminals, and human waste and trash, and a fire was always burning there to consume everything. Over time it became the image of the place of eternal destruction.

It’s important to distinguish between gehenna and sheol or hades, which are the Hebrew and Greek words respectively for the place of the dead. Those two words don’t make a distinction about a person’s eternal destiny, which gehenna does; they are just the place of the dead. Gehenna on the other hand, means the same thing as the “lake of fire” and the “second death” in Revelation (Rev. 19:20; Rev. 20:10, 14-15).

I hate even talking about this. I feel defiled, somehow—dirty, corrupted, assaulted—just talking about hell. I feel like I do when I have just endured a preview for a horror movie (which I never watch.) But then, hell is like that. It is full of horror; it is everything God is not, because God is not there, except to exercise His justice. But friends, this is reality. In fact, this is the ultimate reality for all those who do not accept the death of Christ as payment for their sins. So we have to talk about this, no matter how grisly it is.

What can we learn about the nature of this punishment, this second death, this eternal consequence of unforgiven sin? Well, first, it lasts forever.

Jesus says here in Mark 9 that the fire of hell never goes out, the worm that consumes people there does not die, and the fire is not quenched. Some have suggested that to be cast into hell is to be annihilated, to simply cease to exist, but the Bible does not support that notion. We have this horrible passage in 2 Thes. 1:8-9, “He will punish those who do not know God and do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. [9] They will be punished with everlasting destruction and shut out from the presence of the Lord and from the majesty of his power.” They will be destroyed, yes, but everlastingly, not once for all.[4]

In several places in Matthew, Jesus uses the words “outside” and “darkness” to describe the state of those who are not with Him. He is the light of the world, and they will be in darkness away from Him forever. We clearly have no idea what that darkness will be like, but we do know that when we torture people with extended periods of physical darkness, it destroys their minds. To be outside, when God and all who love Him are “inside” is itself a terrible punishment. I’m sure we’ve all been in situations where there was an “in” crowd, and we were not in it; where we felt outside, either physically, or socially, from others, and it is a very unpleasant feeling to be excluded like that. People in hell are cut off, from God, excluded from all that is good and true and right and beautiful forever.

The third thing we know about hell is that it is a place of terrible suffering. Jesus uses the phrase, “weeping and gnashing of teeth” three different times in Matthew to describe what hell is like. He speaks of a fiery furnace, of being in agony in fire. Dante picked up on this imagery and developed it in excruciating detail in his book, The Inferno, but I don’t think this can be a literal fire, because hell is also a place of darkness, and fire always gives light. Rather, the fire is a figure of speech, intended to convey the truth that the suffering in hell is terrible, intense, unbearable, as though we were being burned. I don’t think that hell is a physical place with oxygen for burning, but rather a state of being, a condition, which is only dimly described by these terrible word pictures.

Friends, this is a terrible truth. I absolutely hate it. And most of us do not really believe it. We say we believe in hell, but if we did, we would be much more passionate about praying for and talking to our friends and relatives who do not know the salvation of God. God has made it possible for us to avoid this terrible end, but we have to avail ourselves of His provision. We have to say “yes” to Jesus Christ.

As you read through the gospels, you discover that Jesus taught a lot about hell. One of the things He said was, Luke 12:4-5, “I tell you, my friends, do not be afraid of those who kill the body and after that can do no more. [5] But I will show you whom you should fear: Fear him who, after the killing of the body, has power to throw you into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear him.”

But this raises a question: the first and greatest commandment is to love God with everything in us (Mark 12:29-30). How does that fit with Jesus telling us to fear Him? Are we supposed to love Him or fear Him? The song, Amazing Grace, says it well: “’Twas grace that taught my heart to fear, and grace my fears relieved.” First, God has to teach us to fear Him, maybe even through a sermon on hell. But even this is an act of grace and love on His part, because we need to know the danger we are in. But then His grace relieves our fears by pointing us to the cross of Christ, and assuring us that Jesus died so we could escape that danger. He lovingly invites us to trust Him to keep us safe forever, to take us to the place that is “inside”, that is full of Light, where there is no more weeping, or mourning or crying or pain, to the place that is full of the love of God. And when we have that assurance, then we love Him back, with everything that is in us.

If you are not absolutely sure your sins are forgiven; if there is any doubt in your mind at all about where you will spend eternity, you need to do something about that today. You need to get right with God, and here’s how you do it: admit to yourself and to God that you have not always obeyed Him, that at bottom, you are a rebel and have resisted His authority in your life. Ask Him to forgive you, on the basis of Jesus’ death on the cross. Remember when He hung on the cross, He cried out, “My God, why have you forsaken me?”? That was the point at which Jesus was cut off, when He was left outside His fellowship with the Father, because He was being punished for your sin. Claim that! Trust that! And then give your life to Christ in gratitude for what He has done for you.

[1] The word is porneia, which is a very general term for sexual immorality. It certainly includes adultery, but it is broad enough to include homosexuality, sexual addiction, and other sexual perversions.

[2] He also healed a man on the Sabbath, based on the same principle. Mark 2:23 – 3:5

[3] Some say to the south of the city, but the exact location is not certain.

[4] That the “second death” (“lake of fire” or gehenna) is not annihilation is shown clearly by Rev. 19:20 and Rev. 20:10. After 1,000 years in the lake of fire the Beast and false prophet still exist there undestroyed.