Queen Valley Community Lutheran Church
October 7th, 2012
Mark 10:2-16
God’s Plan to Protect Children
This passage relates two stories, but they belong together. God intended that just as they happened together, we should read them together.
The first story starts with the Pharisees’ question about marriage and divorce. The second story is about parents bringing their children to Jesus.
Divorce was common in Jesus’ day, both in the Graeco-Roman culture and among the Jews. It had been that way for centuries.
One difference between the Jewish culture and the surrounding Pagan cultures was that among the other peoples there was the possibility of a man unceremoniously throwing his wife out into the street. In the Old Testament Law, God had ordered that among the Jewish people, when a divorce had to take place - under certain, closely defined circumstances - it was to be done by a very specific legal process that included a formal letter of divorce, and the wife would then return to her father’s house. Marriage was to be honored and divorce should be very rare among God’s people.
However, by the time of Christ, some of the Rabbis - not all of them, but especially among the Pharisees - had begun to reinterpret these verses in the Old Testament, which were intended to put strict limitations on divorce, as though they gave a blanket excuse for divorce for any reason at all. If there was anything about his wife that displeased a man he could send her packing. Things had gotten to a point where if she didn’t do exactly what he wanted, when he wanted it, and how he wanted it done, he could divorce her.
It may come as no surprise that the Pharisees’ view was the more popular one. It excused all kinds of abuse and injustice, and it was easy - for the men, anyway. A man knew who was in charge of the home with this view, because he always had the last word. If she argued with him - about anything - he had the ultimate weapon. He could always say, “Okay, that’s it! This marriage is over. You’re out of here!”
The Pharisees knew that if Jesus were to oppose their view on this matter, He would probably lose a lot of followers. So they asked the question, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife...?” In Matthew, where the same story is related, Matthew adds some more words to the question, that Mark leaves out in his account: “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife, for just any reason?”
Jesus said, “What did Moses command you?” In other words, “What does the Bible say?”
The Pharisees quoted a summary of several verses in the Old Testament that appeared to give permission for divorce. They didn’t get into the circumstances under which it might be permitted, just that divorce was an option. That was all they were interested in, and they would run with that wherever they intended to run.
Jesus’ answer has been quoted ever since, in wedding ceremonies and in Biblical teaching about marriage and divorce. “Because of the hardness of your heart, he wrote wrote you this precept.”
That is to say, “Knowing that under certain circumstances, because people are so perverse and wicked that there will occasionally be times when they are going to not be able to stay married, God through Moses made allowances for this in the Law. But it was never what God intended.”
Jesus continues: “But from the beginning of the creation, ‘God made them male and female. For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh,’ so they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let not man separate.”
Jesus establishes several things here. First of all, that marriage is between one man and one woman. I know that there are people around today (and there always have been) who say that there is no reason why two men or two women couldn’t be married, if they are in love, and that it’s unjust and even sinful and hateful to prohibit them from getting married. “After all,” they argue, “these people have a right to the pursuit of happiness, just like anybody else,” and so on. And so they have begun to claim that Christianity, because it opposes their view, is a “religion of hate.”
However, there certainly is a reason to reject that idea. The reason is because the One who made us at the very beginning made us male and female, and He established marriage as one man and one women. God invented us; God invented marriage, and God gets to make the rules. It’s as simple as that.
God alone gets to decide what is right and what is wrong; and He has said in His word that that is wrong.
Second, Jesus establishes that marriage is not just a social contract in which we are free to make up our own rules, write our own vows, and make or dissolve the contract at our whim. In marriage God does something that is beyond the control of mankind. He joins that man and that woman as one flesh, and after that they are no longer two, but one.
What all does that mean? I don’t know the full meaning of it, frankly. I know some of it, but there are mysteries here that are beyond our ability to explain. However, God knows all about it, and He warns us: “What therefore God has joined together, let not man put asunder.”
He did not say, “What God has joined together, man can’t put asunder.” He didn’t say, “It can’t be done.” He said, “Don’t do it!” Because tearing apart what God has made one is a tearing apart of the very fabric of life itself.
Some of you who have been through divorce know what I’m talking about. It is possibly one of the most destructive and painful experiences that men and women can put each other through, and the pain goes on and on for years. In some ways, the pain of that tearing-apart goes on for the rest of your life on this earth.
The second story has to do with children, and there’s a reason why this story follows Jesus’ teaching about marriage and divorce - besides the fact that they just happened one after the other. Verse 13 says, “Then little children were brought to him...” In God’s wonderful timing, just when they had been talking about divorce and the sanctity of marriage in God’s plan, somebody brought some children in for Jesus to bless.
Now you and I know, and especially those who have gone through a divorce, or been the child of a divorced marriage, know that in a divorce no one suffers as much as the children. Divorce thrusts children into situations that they should never have to face.
God’s plan from the beginning was for children to grow up in a home with their Mommy and Daddy, in a kind of protected hothouse environment, where their innocence and freedom to grow up and learn would be protected by the two people who love them more than life itself, and would give anything to keep them safe. There is no other environment so safe for a child to grow up in, as their own home, with their Mom and Dad.
But in the hardness of our hearts, we thrust children out into the cold, hard world unprotected. They are exposed to experiences and temptations that they are not equipped to handle, and many times they are emotionally and morally and spiritually destroyed as a result, because we have ripped apart what God made one, and torn the very fabric of life through divorce.
So in these few verses we have God’s plan for the sanctity of the home and for the protection of children, presented in two short little stories. One man, one woman, committed to each other for life, bound together by God’s own creative power, raising their children under God’s blessing in a safe and nurturing home. Anything less than that is less than what God wants.
Please understand; this is not to say that if you have already been divorced there is no hope for you. Because Jesus died for our sin, and that includes all the things we do that destroy marriages - including divorce. It even includes forgiveness for adultery, and for the hardness of heart and unforgiveness that so often lead to divorce. It includes forgiveness for all the hurtful things we do to each other, even when they haven’t yet resulted in divorce.
And it includes a fresh, clean start; healing for the broken hearts that have been through this painful process. The Bible says that God “Heals the brokenhearted. and binds up their wounds.”
There is no sin that the Blood of Jesus cannot wash away. Jesus redeems the brokenhearted, and gives us new life.
The question is: “Now that I am forgiven, now what? How would God have me live today?” May God grant each of us a heart to understand, to trust His forgiveness and His grace and be strengthened in His will, today.