SERMON ON THE MOUNT
MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE
DR. JIM DIXON
MATTHEW 5:31-32
JULY 22, 2001
The Covenanters were Scottish people who, in the year 1638, signed the National Covenant wherein they pledged that they would defend Presbyterianism in Scotland. They pledged that they would stand to the death against Charles I, King of England, who was seeking to implement Anglican or Episcopalian polity and theology in Scotland. For 50 years, the Covenanters were persecuted until they prevailed in the glorious revolution of 1688. That little slice of Scottish Presbyterian history may hold very little interest for you. And yet, if you are a Christian, if you believe in Jesus Christ as your Lord and as your Savior, there’s a sense in which you are a covenanter. It doesn’t matter whether you are Presbyterian or Anglican, whether you are Baptist or Lutheran, Catholic or Pentecostal. If you believe in Jesus Christ, you have entered into a number of covenants.
First of all, you have entered into a covenant with Christ, and you have pledged your trust in Him as your Savior. You have promised to follow Him as your Lord, and He has entered into covenant with you. He has promised to forgive your sins and to bring you safely through the gates of heaven. In this time on earth, He had pledged to endow you with gifts for service in His kingdom.
If you’re a Christian, you’ve not only entered into a covenant with Christ, but you’ve also entered into a covenant with His church. You can’t separate Christ from His church. The church is the Bride of Christ. Jesus said, “I will build My church, and the powers of hell will not prevail against it.” You expressed that covenant to the church of Christ when you joined this church, and you promised to support this church with your time and your talent and your treasure. This church has entered into covenant with you and has pledged to receive you into its fellowship and to provide for your nurture. Many of you, many of you who are Christians, have entered into a third covenant. You’ve not only entered into a covenant with Christ and a covenant with His church, but you’ve entered into the covenant of marriage.
I entered into the covenant of marriage on a hot summer day, August 21, 1971, in Southern California at a Baptist church in Temple City. I remember as I said my vows I was perspiring profusely, and it was not because I was particularly nervous, but it was so hot—almost 100 degrees outside. There was no air conditioning in the church. I said that day, “I, Jim, take you, Barb, to be my wedded wife, and I do promise and covenant to be your loving and faithful husband in plenty and in want, in joy and in sorrow, in sickness and in health, as long as we both shall live.” Barb entered into that same covenant, and she said those same words to me. This is the covenant of marriage.
The word for covenant in the Bible is the word “diatheke.” That’s the Greek word. It’s a very special word. It’s not like the Greek word “sintheke,” which refers to an agreement mutually arrived at. No, diatheke is the biblical term for a divine covenant. A divine covenant is a covenant instituted by God and regulated by His commandments. That’s what the marriage covenant is. It’s instituted by God. It’s regulated by His commandments. You can’t change the rules. Marriage is a divine covenant. Jesus describes this marriage covenant in Matthew 19, which is really a fuller explanation of what Jesus says in Matthew 5 in the Sermon on the Mount, our passage for today.
In Matthew 19, some of the religious leaders come to Christ and they ask Him, “Can a man divorce his wife for any reason?” Jesus said, “Have you read where He who made them from the beginning made them male and female? Therefore, a man leaves his mother and father and cleaves unto his wife, and the two become one flesh so that they are no longer two. They are one. What therefore God hath joined together, let no one divide.” Those are the words of Christ. He describes the marriage covenant as a covenant of oneness, a covenant of union.
I want us to examine this union, this covenant of marriage, this morning. I have three teachings from God’s Word. The first teaching is this: Marriage is a covenant of sexual union. It is a covenant of sexual oneness. There is no doubt that in Matthew 19 Jesus is stressing the sexual meaning of the statement, “The two shall become one flesh.” There’s no doubt that in 1 Corinthians, chapter 6, the Apostle Paul is stressing the sexual meaning of the statement, “The two shall become one flesh.” Marriage, biblically, is a sexual union.
You’ve all heard of V.I. Lenin. V.I. Lenin was the founder of Communism, the Communist Party. He established the first Communist dictatorship in Russia. He led the October Revolution, the Bolshevik Revolution, in 1917. He was the first ruler of Communist Russia. He was a follower of Karl Marx, and he was himself a Marxist. He felt like the driving force in human history was economics. He had a low view of human sexuality, and of course he gave his famous “glass of water” speech where he said that sex was no more than a glass of water. The sex act is no more than drinking a glass of water. If you’re thirsty, you have a glass of water, but if you like having sex, you just do it! It doesn’t matter who it’s with. It’s just a glass of water.
That perspective, of course, flourishes in the world today. We see it all over the world, even in the free world and even in those democratic nations where human sexuality is no more significant than a glass of water. But the teachings of Jesus Christ are radical. Christ tells us that when you enter into sex, you are expressing the marriage covenant. When you have sex with another person, that is an expression of the marriage covenant which is a covenant of sexual union. That is why the Bible condemns premarital sex. That is why the Bible condemns sex outside of marriage. That is why the Apostle Paul, in 1 Corinthians, chapter 6, warns Christians in Corinth that if they have sex with anyone other than their wife, they are becoming “one flesh” with that other person and violating the marriage covenant. And so, adultery, Jesus tells us, violates the sexual union of the marriage covenant.
The word that Jesus uses in our passage of scripture for today for adultery is the Greek word “porneia.” Originally this word referred to sex prior to marriage, what was called fornication, but the word and the meaning of the word evolved, so at the time of Christ the word had a broader scope of meaning and oftentimes referred to adultery and had become almost synonymous with the Greek word “moicheia,” which is the Greek word for adultery. Christ is telling us that adultery violates the marriage covenant, which is a covenant of sexual union.
We need to understand the world to which Christianity came, the world in the time of Christ. It was predominantly a Greek and Roman world. In the Greek world, adultery was not a sin for the husband. Adultery in the Greek world was only a sin for the wife. The wife was called to purity. The husband was free sexually. This was the common view throughout the Greek world, and any Greek historian would tell you that.
In the Greek world, the husband was encouraged to use prostitutes. In every Greek city, there were prostitutes. Prostitution was associated with the Greek religion. Virtually every Greek temple had temple prostitutes. This was particularly true of those temples that were dedicated to the fertility goddesses. In the city of Corinth, in a single temple, we know from historical writings that there were more than a thousand prostitutes. Of course, Greek husbands would go to the temple and they would have sex with a prostitute, believing that the fertility goddess would thereby bless their land. They also did it for pleasure, but they believed that their crops would increase if they had sexual union with a prostitute at a temple of a fertility goddess. Sometimes Greek wives actually encouraged their husbands to go to the temple and have sex with a prostitute. They would do this when the wife was seeking to have a child and was infertile or barren. “Go and have sex with the prostitutes at the temple. Maybe that will help me conceive.” It was an unbelievable world, and yet historically this is true. This is the way the Greek world was.
Not only were Greek husbands permitted and encouraged to use prostitutes, but they were also encouraged to have concubines. In the Greek world, the concubines were called “hetaira.” Many Greek husbands had many concubines. This was full acceptable. In fact, when a Greek man went out into the city and out into the culture and out into the world, he would rarely bring his wife. Wives were supposed to remain in seclusion. More normally he would bring his concubine or one of his concubines. Concubines were commonly held or possessed by Greek men. This was true from Alexander the Great to Socrates. That was the world to which the gospel came.
I want to read you a quote from Demosthenes. He made this statement with regard to Greek husbands. Demosthenes said this. “As Greek husbands, we have prostitutes for the sake of pleasure, concubines for the sake of daily cohabitation, and wives for the purpose of having children legitimately and for the management of household affair.” That was the prevailing view in the Greek world of the marriage union. It was not a sexual union. It was not a covenant of sexual union. Greek men were encouraged to have sex outside of their marriage.
Cicero, the famous Cicero, in his defense of Caelius, argues extensively for adultery, saying that adultery is not wrong, that in the Greek world and in the Greek culture it has always been viewed as moral and acceptable and is to be encouraged for Greek men. Unbelievable.
I just finished reading a book by Rodney Stark, who is Professor of Sociology at the University of Washington. I don’t know whether he’s a Christian or not, but I know that his book is now widely used in the academic world. His book is called “The Rise of Christianity.” I just completed reading it. He argues that Christianity grew rapidly for a variety of reasons. He points out that in the year 350, there were approximately 60 million people in the Roman Empire and 35 million of them, more than half of them, had become Christians. He believes the primary reason has to do with women. Women came en masse to embrace Christianity because they found status and stature in Christianity that they found nowhere in the Greco-Roman world. Even the Roman world had been Hellenized, and it was sexually debauched.
There was no security for a woman in the Greco-Roman world. She could be cast aside on a whim. But you see, in Christianity, men and women were valued equally. They were brothers and sisters, children of God, co-heirs, equal inheritors of the grace of life. A man was no more allowed to commit adultery than a woman because marriage is a covenant, and it’s a covenant of oneness, and that is expressed in sexual union. Adultery breaks sexual union, whether it’s committed by the man or the woman. Christianity afforded this higher view morally and in terms of gender.
Even in the Jewish world in the time of Christ, women—wives—were oftentimes cast aside. This was based on the misinterpretation of Deuteronomy, chapter 24, verse 1 and following. In Deuteronomy, chapter 24, verses 1 and following, we have the instructions of Moses with regard to the certificate of divorce, that a husband could divorce his wife if she was involved in something “unseemly.” What is the meaning of that Hebrew word rendered unseemly?
There were two Jewish schools. There was the School of Shammai and the School of Hillel. The Shammai School was conservative and strict. They argued that the only thing unseemly that would justify a certificate of divorce was adultery. But the other school, the Hillel School, was liberal. It held a broader view. The Hillel School said, “No, anything can be unseemly. If a wife prepares the meal poorly, that’s unseemly. If she puts too much salt on the food, that’s unseemly. If she just doesn’t look as good as other women, that’s unseemly.”
You can imagine the view of the Hillel school, the liberal view, had prevailed in the day of Christ. The view of the Shammai School was virtually unheard of. So, in Israel in the time of Christ, divorce was common. Women were just being cast aside for any reason. This was a misinterpretation of Deuteronomy 24.
Women were afraid to get married because there was no security there. When a woman was divorced by her husband and cast aside, she had no means of making a living. Many of them turned to prostitution, and that’s one of the reasons why Jesus said, “Whoever divorces his wife except for the grounds of unchastity makes her an adulteress.” This was the culture to which the gospel came and to which Jesus spoke these words.
Marriage is a covenant, and it is a covenant of oneness, and that oneness is sexual. Marriage is a sexual union. Adultery violates that sexual union and is just cause for divorce. This does not mean, however, that every marriage where there’s adultery need end in divorce. There are other principles in the Bible—principles of forgiveness, principles of repentance, principles of grace and mercy. If you’ve been in a marriage where there’s been adultery, if there’s repentance, there should be hope of reconciliation and healing. But Jesus is saying, “Marriage is a covenant. Take sex seriously because it is a covenant of sexual union.”
It is also a covenant of emotional union. This is our second teaching. Marriage is a covenant of emotional oneness. Two shall become one emotionally.
Years ago, I shared a poem with some of you, and I rarely do that because I’m not really into poetry. It was a poem that Barb sent to me when we were dating, before we were engaged. Barb found this poem in Time Magazine. It was supposedly the favorite romantic poem of Ali McGraw. The poem Barb that Barb sent to me went like this: “I am I and you are you. I’m not in this world to live up to your expectations, and you are not in this world to live up to mine. I do my thing. You do your thing. If by chance we find each other, it’s beautiful. If not, it can’t be helped.”
I’m not really into poetry, as I said, and I tend to be right-brained and kind of linear. I want to rationally dissect everything. When I got this poem, I began to kind of take it apart piecemeal, trying to figure out what Barb was saying to me. “I am I and you are you….” That certainly was true. But it sounded kind of separate, and I was beginning to love Barb, and I didn’t want to be separate “I’m not in this world to live up to your expectations and you’re not in this world to live up to mine….” Certainly that’s true. Even theologically that’s true, and yet I didn’t really like that either because that felt separate. That felt kind of detached. “I do my thing. You do your thing.” That was very ‘60s. “I do my thing. You do your thing.” That sounds very ‘60s. “If by chance we find each other, it’s beautiful. If not, it can’t be helped.” I really didn’t like that. That just sounded emotionally detached, and I wanted to be emotionally attached because I was beginning to love Barb.
I took the poem, and I showed it to my roommates. We were in seminary together. They said, “Dixon, we think she’s telling you to take a hike!” I called Barb and we talked about this poem. We talked about this poem, and Barb didn’t mean it that way at all. In fact, she just didn’t want me to feel any pressure. She kind of sent this poem to sort of say, “Don’t worry. Lighten up. There’s no pressure here.” In discussing the poem, we wound up communicating with each other how we felt about each other. We realized we both loved each other, and that’s part of what led to our engagement and ultimately led to our marriage. That’s what I wanted and longed, to be married to Barb. I wanted to experience no emotional detachment but emotional attachment, which is part of what marriage and the marriage covenant is meant to be.
Now, obviously men and women are different. We’re different emotionally, and we’re just different in every way. That’s why John Gray wrote his well-known book, “Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus.” You hear a lot of jokes stereotypically about the differences between men and women. It’s been said that women love movies where one person dies slowly, and men love movies where lots of people die quickly! Of course, that’s just stereotypical.
I heard one comedian say, “When a woman says, ‘I’ll call you later,’ she means when she gets home. When a man says, ‘I’ll call you later,’ he means before he dies!” But certainly, there are tremendous differences between us as men and women, and yet we’ve been called into covenant. It is a divine covenant, and it involves emotional union. We really kind of understand the meaning of this when we go to Romans, chapter 12, and we see the description of the body of Christ and the oneness that’s meant to be part of the Christian fellowship. We’re told that we are to “weep with those who weep, and we are to rejoice with those who rejoice.” This kind of empathy, this kind of sympathy, is to be supremely manifested in Christian marriage where there’s an effort to feel what the other feels as part of the marriage union and the emotional oneness.
Yesterday, Barb and I went to the Rockies game. The Rockies, of course, have lost 23 out of 28 games. Yesterday they managed to lose 22- 7 which, in baseball, is not easy to do. We hadn’t been to a Rockies game in a couple of years, and we bought these tickets for this game early in the year when there was still hope. We did not know where the seats were located. When we got to Coors Field, we realized the seats were up in the highest level. As we went up there, we were six rows from the overhang at the highest level. Barb has a little acrophobia where she’s afraid of heights and she gets vertigo. We got up there, and her head just began to spin. Her heart began to pound. It was kind of a phobic reaction for Barb.
We sat down, and she just literally grabbed the seat and held on. I think she felt like she was about to experience a free fall. She grabbed hold of me and just kind of held onto me because of this feeling that she was having. I asked her if she wanted to go, and she said no and she thought eventually she would feel better. She just continued to hold onto me. Of course, yesterday afternoon it was about 90-some degrees. It was pretty hot, but I really didn’t mind because, honestly, I was feeling kind of what she was feeling. I could feel the panic that she felt. I couldn’t help but feel for her. I wanted to help.
On the way in, we bought hot dogs. She was sick to her stomach and couldn’t eat the hot dog, but I was there for her, so I ate the hot dog. But I honestly have to say, there’s nobody I’d rather go to the baseball game with than Barb. There’s nobody I’d rather go to anything with than Barb. When I do something with Barb, it’s twice the fun. If I’m experiencing something that sad, it’s half as sad if Barb is there. Life is just better with Barb. She’s become my very best friend. There’s an emotional kind of union there that I know is part of the marriage covenant that a Christian husband and wife are meant to experience. I think it doesn’t just happen. I think this is the kind of thing we need to work on, this oneness emotionally, this union emotionally. I think Christian husbands and wives need to “date” each other, continuing to court each other, spending time together, developing that intimacy of friendship and learning to feel what the other is feeling.
Years ago, I read an article. I believe it was in Scientific American. It was an article by a geologist concerning the shifting of the Continental Plates on the West Coast of the United States. According to this geologist, the plates are shifting in such a way that the cities of San Francisco and Los Angeles are actually moving closer together. They’re moving closer together at the rate of one inch per year. In a little over 60,000 years, L.A. and San Francisco, because of the shifting of the Continental Plates, will actually be a mile closer to each other. In a little over 20 million years, these two cities will become one. It occurred to me that that’s kind of how some marriages are working. People are kind of coming together at a similarly slow pace. That’s not what God wants. He wants us to experience the union of the marriage covenant not just sexually but emotionally. This requires our commitment.
Finally, marriage is a covenant of spiritual union. It’s a covenant of spiritual oneness. When the Bible says, “the two shall become one,” it’s not simply speaking sexually or emotionally, but it’s speaking spiritually. In John, chapter 17, we have the high priestly prayer of our Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus prayed that prayer the night before He went to the cross, and yet He wasn’t focused on Himself. He was focused on us, and He was praying for us, for all those generations of people who would believe in His name through the gospel. His prayer for us is that we would be one.
Jesus prayed to the Father saying, “I am in them and Thou art in Me that they might be one, that they might be perfectly one.” Of course, Jesus is speaking here of spiritual oneness, oneness that is based on our faith in Him and in His Father. This oneness is to characterize the body of Christ, a spiritual oneness. We have one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father. We are united in Christ.
Paul speaks of this in his letter to the Galatians where he says, “In Christ, there is neither Jew nor Greek, neither slave nor free, neither male nor female, but all are one in Christ Jesus.” Paul is speaking of the spiritual oneness that is meant to characterize the body of Christ regardless of ethnicity, regardless of socio-economic status, regardless of gender. The body of Christ is called to spiritual oneness. But nowhere is this spiritual oneness meant to be manifested more clearly than in the marriage covenant where a Christian husband and a Christian wife have come together and they’ve come together in spiritual union. If your marriage is a Christian marriage and you are both believers in Jesus Christ, it will affect the way you live. It affects the way we use our time. Barb and I take time for devotions. We take time for prayer. We take time for worship.
Looking through statistics relating to our church, we’ve discovered that we have about 9,500 people who are involved in some regular fashion with Cherry Hills Community Church—9,500 people—and yet on an average summer Sunday, only one-third of our people are here. On an average winter Sunday, one-half of our people are here. I hope and pray that those people who are not here are going to church somewhere, wherever they are on Sunday. I hope that, if they’re married, that that’s part of their spiritual oneness, part of their covenant.
Just a few weeks ago, Barb and I were up in the mountains. We were in the Keystone area. It was Sunday morning. We went to church at Dillon Community Church. You sit outdoors in an amphitheater. You can look out over Dillon Lake and worship in a beautiful setting. Brian Post, who is the pastor there, is actually a good friend of mine. I didn’t have to beg Barb to go. She wants to worship. Barb didn’t have to beg me to go. I want to worship. It’s part of our spiritual union.
As we were driving to the Rockies game yesterday, Barb was talking to me about a book she’s reading. It’s a book where there’s a chapter on Hudson Taylor, who was the great missionary who founded the China Inland Mission. There’s a chapter in the book on Charles Spurgeon, the great preacher in England. She told me there’s a chapter in the book on Martin Luther who, of course, launched the Protestant Reformation. The Lutheran Church takes its name from his name. There’s a chapter in there on John Knox, who founded Presbyterianism in Scotland. There’s a chapter in there on C.S. Lewis, a chapter in there on John Bunyan, and just chapter after chapter. But she said what she loved is that each chapter dealt with that person’s marriage. So it didn’t just focus on this famous Christian leader but upon their marriage. It focused on the wives too and their spirituality and their spiritual journeys, their love for Christ and their commitment to Christ. She was telling me all these things and I was fascinated. She was telling me more about it last night. But because we are Christians in the covenant of marriage, we have a spiritual union wherein we both seek to grow. We’re both reading stuff and sharing stuff, wherein we seek to grow together.
Let that be true of you. If it’s not true of you, seek to make it happen. Make the commitment to spiritual growth today as a couple. Of course, if you’re experiencing spiritual union, it’s not only going to affect the way you use your time. It will affect the way you use your talents. Are you offering your gifts, your God-given gifts to the service of the Church and His kingdom? Are you doing that both as a husband and a wife?
We have opportunities for you to serve, many of which you can do as a couple. You can look in the program for today, and you can see we’ve having classes for small group leaders. There’s going to be a class later this week on the 26th. There will be two classes next month, and there will also be a class in September. You can go to any one of these classes and be trained to be a small group leader. This is something you can do as a team, as a husband and a wife, offering your gifts in the service of Christ. If you’re interested in that, there’s a table in the lobby where you can sign up today or at least go to the class and find out more about it. We need Sunday school teachers. Many times, you can do that as a team. If you’re experiencing spiritual union, you both want to be involved in Christian service.
Of course, it’s not only going to affect the way you use your time and the way you offer your talents, but also your treasure. The Old Testament Bible tells us that God commanded the tithe and the giving of the first fruits to the work of God on earth. And so, the Jewish people came, and they offered their first tenth, the tithe, of all of their proceeds. They offered it to the Lord. God also commanded that they gave offerings over and above the tithe for specific needs of the work of God on earth.
There are many Bible scholars who believe that the tithe is assumed in the New Testament era. I believe that Jesus explicitly commands the tithe in the New Testament era because Jesus said to the religious leaders, the Scribes and the Pharisees, “You tithe mint, dill, and cumin…” in other words, you tithe even minutia, “and yet you’re ignoring love and mercy and justice. These you ought to have done without neglecting the others.” He’s clearly endorsing the tithe. But even if you believe that the tithe was no longer mandated, surely it represents a minimal standard of Christian giving.
My parents taught me to tithe. They taught me that when I’m able, I should go beyond the tithe. I know that both of my brothers seek to tithe. I sought to find a woman that I could marry who would believe in giving. I wanted my wife to not resist giving but to embrace giving. And Barb does embrace giving. From the very beginning, we resolved that we would tithe, and it wasn’t even controversial. I didn’t have to fight with her or she with me. It was part of our spiritual commitment in this covenant of marriage, part of our spiritual union.
I don’t know what the average family in this church or the average household in this church makes a year. I do know that in Douglas County the average household makes $77,000 a year. If that represents this congregation, then I know that the average household in this church is giving less than 2% of income to the general operating budget. We can’t make it like that.
I really feel like I’ve failed. I feel like I’ve failed. How could we be giving so poorly? I think we made a decision years ago to be a “seeker-friendly” church, and perhaps we’ve been a little too sensitive with regard to issues relating to money. I only preach on giving twice a year. I’ve talked to people who say, “You know, we’ve never been to a church where the pastor speaks so little on the subject of money.” Well, maybe that needs to change because clearly I have not discipled you. Yet it might be that in your marriage there’s a lack of spiritual union. Maybe you want to give, but maybe your spouse doesn’t. Maybe that’s a matter of conflict. Maybe neither one of you want to give. Maybe that’s an area where you tremendously and desperately need growth. But time, talent, and treasure are all impacted by a Christian marriage, which is a covenant of spiritual union. My hope and prayer are that you are in a marriage where you sense spiritual union, emotional union, sexual union, and faithfulness.
We recognize that this is a diverse congregation, and some of you are in marriages where you’re really struggling. Some of you are divorced. God loves you all. We want to serve all of you, but we also want to strengthen your marriages. We want you to realize that marriage is a covenant, and it is a covenant of union and oneness sexually, emotionally, and spiritually. We want you to take that covenant seriously and commit and consecrate today anew to your marriage. Let’s close with a word of prayer.