Divorce

Mt. 19:8

He said to them, Because of the hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so. And I say to you: whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery.

The Pharisees asked Jesus to address the issue of divorce. The exact question was, Is it lawful to divorce one's wife for any cause? To answer, Jesus referred back to the institution of marriage by God the Father who was the Creator of the man and woman. Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. So they are no longer two but one flesh, What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate? In truth, if marriage makes the two one, how can they separate? What would be the separating factor? The Pharisees responded with Moses provision for divorce, but Jesus nailed the seed truth embedded in Moses' pronouncement. It was not to honor God that he allowed divorce, but instead it was because of the hardness of their hearts. Ouch! Hardness then just like the hardness in the Pharisees on this day! Jesus went on to say divorce would only be right for sexual immorality because then the one-flesh relationship would be broken. And if anyone divorced his wife for any other cause, he would be committing adultery if he had a relationship with a different person. How powerful were His words! I wonder if the Pharisees really evaluated their hearts on this day, or did they just immediately dismiss what He had said?

Heb. 3:12 says Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called today, that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. There is the progression: evil unbelief leads to falling away and eventually to being hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. How deceitful are the lies that lead marriage partners to seek fulfillment in others? How devastating to the children when the parents have split? Certainly, marriage is an arena that needs special care. Within these relationships, emotions are raw, expectations unmet, and problems grow to giant-proportions. What better place for the heart to grow hard and willing to listen to the lies and deceit of sin?

Father,
Thank You for John. I confess that many times our marriage has listened to lies, and I have often hardened my heart to him and to You. Give me Your grace to make our marriage what it should be. Thank You for answering so many of our prayers for each other and for infusing our relationship with Your love. We see Your hand at work drawing us to each other.
In Jesus name,
Amen