Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
My God and My Neighbor is a “Bible talk show” that looks at religious issues, Christian living and world events in light of the Word of God to give hope. This podcast is a ministry of Tennessee Bible College. TBC offers a bachelor's in Bible studies, a master of theology, and a doctorate of theology in apologetics and Christian evidences. TBC also provides Christian books, audio recordings on the Bible, and free Bible courses in English and Spanish. Tune in to My God and My Neighbor to experience the educational content that TBC has been delivering for nearly five decades!
Kerry Duke: Hi, I'm Kerry Duke, host of My God and My Neighbor podcast from Tennessee Bible College, where we see the Bible as not just another book, but the Book. Join us in a study of the inspired Word to strengthen your faith and to share what you've learned with others.
The topic that we're about to discuss today is an uncomfortable subject for a lot of people, especially if you've had to live through it. It's a very painful experience in life, and it's also very common. Most families have to deal with this. Most families have to face this issue to some degree or another. And do you realize that it was common in Jesus day? Do you realize that the Gentile world was oftentimes full of divorce? And the Jews themselves, who had the Old Testament, also had a problem with divorce. And that brought on a whole lot of questions about this issue, especially the issue of divorce and remarriage.
Jesus deals with that. He addresses this issue in Matthew chapter 5, beginning in verse 31. Jesus said, “It has been said, whosoever shall put away his wife, let him give her a writing of divorcement. But I say unto you, that whosoever shall put away his wife, saving for the cause of fornication, causes her to commit adultery. And whosoever shall marry her that is divorced, commits adultery.” This is the third example of Jesus saying that the scribes and Pharisees were misteaching what the Old Testament said.
The scribes and the Pharisees didn't teach all the truth about these matters concerning the Bible. The first two examples that he gives involve a quotation from the Ten Commandments. Verse 21 is where Jesus quotes the words “Thou shalt not kill.” Verse 27 is where he quotes the words “Thou shalt not commit adultery.”
Now, most Bible readers are much more familiar with those words than they are the teaching in verse 31. To a lot of Bible readers today, these words about this writing or this bill of divorcement may sound strange. That's why we need to go back to the Old Testament to those very words. And the section where you find those words is Deuteronomy chapter 24. I'm going to begin reading in verse one. Now this is where Jesus talks about this bill of divorce that was a hot issue in his time. Deuteronomy chapter 24 verse 1: “When a man has taken a wife and married her…” So we've got a Jewish couple here, a man and his wife. “And it come to pass that she find no favor in his eyes.” In other words, he's displeased with her, he's dissatisfied. And then it explains why: “Because he has found some uncleanness in her.” Now the word uncleanness there comes from a Hebrew word which means something shameful, something indecent. And the Jewish people for hundreds of years after this had a lot of discussions and a lot of debates about what that means.
What is the meaning of this unclean or shameful or indecent thing? By the time that Jesus came to the earth, this was a hot button issue. It was highly controversial in Jesus’ day. There were two main schools of thought among the Jews. And these two main schools of thought came from two prominent rabbis. And one of those highly respected rabbis who lived before Jesus came to the earth and had a lot of influence on people was named Shammai. His position was that the uncleanness here in Deuteronomy chapter 24 verse 1 is adultery. So he taught that the only reason that you could divorce your wife was because of adultery.
So I ask you to put yourself in the place of Jews who read this before Jesus came on the scene. Shammai lived before Jesus came to the earth. And Shammai said if you just look at Deuteronomy chapter 24 verse 1, it looks like that this uncleanness is adultery. In other words, she has committed adultery and the man has the right to divorce her.
Now, the problem with that is that the Old Testament gave the death penalty for adultery [Leviticus 20 verse 10]. The adulterous and the adulterer shall surely be put to death. But here in this passage, the Bible says that the husband is to write her a bill of divorcement. Well, if she had been guilty of adultery, she was to be put to death. It wouldn't make any sense for him to write her a bill of divorcement, give it in her hand, and send her out of his house if she was only going to go down the road to be stoned. So Moses doesn't say to put her to death; he says to give her a bill of divorcement. That seems to be the strongest reason for saying that the uncleanness here is not quite on the level of physical adultery.
Now, on the other hand, you had a famous rabbi that lived before Jesus whose name was Hillel. Rabbi Hillel was the more liberal thinker on this subject. In fact, he actually said this. He said that if a man's wife has overcooked the meal, let's say that she has burned the dinner, she has burned the bread, then that gives him a right to divorce her because she has found no favor in his eyes. He actually said that this uncleanness would include something like burning the evening meal. Now, to us today, that is so ridiculous that it sounds like it's just funny. But to these Jews, this was a serious matter and Hillel was not joking about that.
He said something that light and something that trivial would actually give the husband the right to divorce her. Now, we know that can't be true. God said in the very beginning, in Genesis 2 verse 24, that the two shall become one flesh. And he never intended for people to use something as trivial as what we're talking about as a ground to dissolve the marital bond.
And remember that the subject in Deuteronomy 24 verse 1 and in Matthew 32 is not simply divorce. It is divorce and remarriage. That's what Jesus was talking about. That's what Moses was talking about. So with that in mind, let's look first of all at a couple of examples from the Old Testament where the Scriptures show how serious this was in God's sight.
The first one is in 2 Samuel chapter 3. This is the story of David and his wife, Michal. Now, Michal was the daughter of King Saul. Saul is dead at this point. But Saul had been trying to kill David. David was on the run for all that time, and he had been separated from his wife. Now Saul hated David so much that he gave his daughter, David's wife, to another man, and that other man had married her.
Now, that other marriage was not right. It was not biblical. It was not a scriptural lawful union. So, in 2 Samuel chapter 3, Saul is dead, things have settled down, and David wants to be reunited with his lawfully wedded wife. She's married to another man, but not scripturally. So, how do you work this out?
Well, the Bible says in 2 Samuel chapter 3 verse 15, a man named Ishbosheth sent and took her,” that is Michal, “from her husband, even from Phaltiel, the son of Laish.” So she had married this man. They'd gone through some kind of marital ceremony. But it was not scriptural. It was not biblical. He was her husband, but not her biblical husband.
So the Bible says that her husband “went with her along, weeping behind her to Behurim.” In other words, it broke his heart. He really loved this woman. But the bottom line was that he had no right to this woman. People today oftentimes don't understand this or don't want to accept it because feelings are all that matter today to a lot of people. If they fall in love with someone, if they want someone for a while, then they think that they have the right to be with that person in marriage or out of marriage, in a scriptural marriage or in an unscriptural marriage. It doesn't matter to people today. They just know how they feel. But the truth is that this woman was married to another man.
Michal was married to David. She was David's wife, not the Phaltiel's. And there's nothing that any man could do to change that. We don't know all the details, but it wouldn't have mattered if Saul the king had tried to annul the marriage or to try to get some kind of divorce and then have these two married. Those things wouldn't matter at all because she was still the wife of David in God's sight. And here's another example in the Old Testament. It's found in Ezra chapter 10. This is the story of the Jews who had returned to Jerusalem from Babylonian captivity. Some of the Jewish men at this time had married foreign women which they were not supposed to do.
So there was a big problem in Ezra chapter 10. How did Ezra the priest deal with this problem? Listen very carefully now to Ezra chapter 10, beginning in verse 10. “And Ezra the priest stood up and said unto them, ‘You have transgressed and have taken strange wives to increase the trespass of Israel.’”
So what does he tell them to do? Does he tell them just to stay with those women? No, the Bible says in verse 11, “Now therefore, make confession unto the Lord God of your fathers and do his pleasure and separate yourselves from the people of the land and from the strange wives.” Now, I want you to listen very carefully to the last verse in Ezra chapter 10 because it gives you some more information about these marriages. They'd been married long enough to have children in these marriages that they were not supposed to contract. In Ezra chapter 10, verse 44: “All these had taken strange wives, and some of them had wives by whom they had children.”
And here's another example in Malachi chapter 2. The events in the book of Malachi took place in the same general time frame as what you find in Ezra and Nehemiah. It's about the Jews that had returned from Babylonian captivity. They'd made some big mistakes. And the thing that Malachi talks about is the fact that some of these Jewish men had divorced their wives evidently for the purpose of marrying some of those pagan women. And in Malachi chapter two, verse 13, the prophet rebukes these people for it.
Listen to what he says in Malachi chapter two, beginning in verse 13. “And this have you done again, covering the altar of the Lord with tears, with weeping, and with crying out.” Who are the ones who are crying when they come to the altar at the temple? Who are the ones who are crying out like this when they go to the altar to make their offerings before God?
It's the wives of these Jewish men who have divorced them so that they can marry some of these pagan women. The Bible says in verse 13, you've “covered the altar of the Lord with tears insomuch that he,” that is God, “does not regard the offering anymore or receive it with goodwill at your hand.” In other words, he's saying to these Jewish men: your worship to me is in vain because of what you've done to these women. I will not accept your offerings anymore.
“Yet you say, wherefore?” In other words, these Jewish men had the gall, the audacity, to say, “Well, why, why wouldn't the Lord do that?” Verse 14 says, “Because the Lord has been witness against you and the wife of your youth, against whom you have dealt treacherously.” You've divorced her. You had no reason to do that. You had no right to do that. “Yet she is your companion and the wife of your covenant.” You made a covenant. You made a vow and a promise to her to stay with her. And yet you have divorced her so that you can marry one of these pagan women. The Bible says in verse 15, “And did he not make one,” that is, the two shall become one flesh? “Yet had he the residue of the Spirit. And wherefore one? That he might seek a godly seed. Therefore take heed to your spirit, and let none deal treacherously against the wife of his youth. For the Lord, the God of Israel, says that He hates putting away.” Now that's divorce. That's what these men had done.
And God says, I hate that. Now, you might say, “Well, how could God say that he hates divorce here in Malachi 2. 16 when he gave the bill of divorce teaching in Deuteronomy chapter 24 verse 1?” Well, sometimes preachers explain that and say, “Well, it doesn't make any difference if it was a right or scriptural divorce or a wrong divorce. God still hates it.”
Well, that's not the context here. The context here is not a scriptural divorce. These are unscriptural divorces that he's talking about in Malachi chapter two. So Deuteronomy chapter 24 verse one is not the same as Malachi chapter two. So all these verses are the background to Jesus discussion in Matthew chapter five, verse 31 and 32.
So let's return there to the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus said, “It has been said,” and it was said in particular by whom? The scribes and the Pharisees were right when they taught the people that the Old Testament said, “Whosoever shall put away his wife, let him give her a writing of divorcement.”
Was that in the Old Testament? Was that a part of the law of Moses? Yes, there was nothing wrong with them quoting that. That was the same as them saying “Thou shalt not kill” in verse 21 or “Thou shalt not commit adultery” in verse 27. The problem is they took it too far. They got it out of proportion. They twisted what the Bible says.
When Moses gave that bill of divorcement in Deuteronomy chapter 24 verse 1, he never intended for the Jews to put away their wives for just any reason whatsoever and marry somebody else. Jesus said that is not the meaning of what Moses said. But again, the scribes and the Pharisees were taking Moses words out of context. They were misapplying what Moses taught. When people would get a divorce for some kind of frivolous, trivial reason, sometimes the scribes and Pharisees would just say, “Well, Moses said if you're going to divorce her, you give her a bill of divorcement.” It didn't make any difference what the cause was. It didn't make any difference if it was some kind of trivial, frivolous, ridiculous reason. They just said as long as you give her a bill of divorcement, then you've done what the law says.
There was more to it than that. And that's what Jesus again is calling our attention to. The Lord said you can't just divorce your wife for any and every reason and marry somebody else and justify it by saying, “Oh well, the law of Moses said that I'm supposed to give my wife a bill of divorcement” and then everything is okay. It was not okay.
And so Jesus explains this. In verse 32, He said, “But I say to you that whosoever shall put away his wife saving for the cause of fornication causes her to commit adultery, and whosoever shall marry her that is divorced commits adultery.” I'm reading from the King James Version for a reason here—several reasons.
And I have to explain some of the difference in the wording between the King James, the new King James and other versions. First of all, the King James version uses the words “put away.” You notice that in verse 31. You see that in verse 32. You'll find that in other passages. Now the words put away mean divorce. That's what the Greek word means. But you don't have to know one word of Greek to know that put away means divorce because of the context. Look at what he says in verse 32: “Whosoever shall put away his wife, saving for the cause of fornication, causes her to commit adultery, and whosoever shall marry her that is divorced”—the one that's put away, is divorced—he commits adultery also. So to put away doesn't just mean to separate. It doesn't just mean to tell someone to get out of the house. It means to go through the formal procedure of divorce.
Secondly, you have the expression “saving for the cause of fornication.” Now this is very specific. Jesus gave an exception here. And it is the cause of fornication. Now, in Matthew chapter 19, verse nine, you have the only other time where this exception is given. In Matthew 19, verse nine, Jesus said, “Whosoever shall put away his wife, except it be for fornication and shall marry another, commits adultery.”
That is strong, definite language, and it is exclusive language. I mean, exclusive in this way. When the Bible says “saving for the cause of fornication” or “except it be for fornication,” that means there is no other reason, there is no other way. And to show how strong this wording is, just consider the word accept in some other verses.
Luke 13 verse 3 says, “Except you repent, you shall all likewise perish.” That means that there's no other way. You have to repent. In John chapter three, verse three, the Bible says, “Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. John three, verse five: “Except a man be born of water and of the spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.”
There is no other way. So when it comes to the question of divorce and remarriage, Jesus said in Matthew 19 verse nine, “except it be for fornication.” And in Matthew 5. 32, “saving for the cause of fornication.”
Now let's talk about this word fornication for just a minute. A lot of the more recent translations use words like “marital unfaithfulness,” “marital infidelity,” or as the New King James Version says, “sexual immorality.”
Now, those expressions are not as definite. They're not as precise as the word fornication. The word fornication refers to every kind of unlawful sexual union. That's the meaning of the word. Sexual immorality might include all kinds of things. There are different kinds of sexual immorality that fall short of fornication, which is the actual sexual union.
Now, here's what is important to remember about this word fornication. As I said, in the Greek this word porneia refers to every kind of unlawful sexual union. It's a broader word than the word adultery. The word adultery means that you have two people, one at least of whom has been married, and those people commit the sexual act. So there's a marriage somewhere involved in that.
The word fornication is a broader word. It can refer to premarital sex. Not always, but it can include that. Now, you can't just pick up a Webster's Dictionary and say, “Okay, I'm going to look up the word fornication to see what it means” because Webster's not an authority on that. He's not an authority on how these words are used in the Bible. We're talking about the biblical meaning of these words. And the word fornication in the King James and American Standard Versions, which is from the Greek word porneia, can refer to premarital sex. But it's broader than that. It's not the equivalent of fornication in your English dictionary.
It is a word which includes every kind of unlawful sexual union. For instance, in Jude 7, the Bible talks about the people of Sodom and Gomorrah who had gone after strange flesh and had given themselves over to fornication. Now that means fornication in the biblical sense includes homosexuality. And this is why Jesus didn't use the word for adultery here.
He didn't say the cause of adultery. He didn't say except it be for adultery. Because if he had limited the cause for divorce to adultery, then what would happen to a man whose wife had gone out with another woman and become a lesbian. What would happen in the case of a woman whose husband had married another man? She wouldn't have any right to divorce him if this is only adultery. No, the word fornication is a word that includes homosexuality. It includes incest. It includes pedophilia. It includes adultery as well. But at the same time, this language excludes all the ridiculous, frivolous, trivial reasons that people used to get a divorce and remarry today.
So the scribes who were the popular and highly respected religious teachers of the day said that there were all kinds of reasons for divorce and remarriage. Jesus said no. There's one. And when He stated that there's one cause, he went back to the very beginning, not just to the law of Moses, but He went back to marriage as God gave it in the beginning.
And we'll see that especially when we get to Matthew chapter 19 verse nine. I bring that up because sometimes we might wonder, “Well, why did Jesus introduce this here in Matthew chapter five, verse 32?” Because in all the other cases, He's comparing what the scribes and Pharisees said about the law of Moses with what God actually meant. Well, He's going back to God's ideal plan for marriage from the beginning. That's what he's going to talk about in Matthew chapter 19.
But let's look at Matthew chapter 5 verse 32 and notice what He says happens when people ignore and violate this teaching. He said that “whosoever shall put away his wife,” that is divorces his wife, “saving for the cause of fornication, causes her to commit adultery.”
Why? Because in most cases, especially in Bible times, she would go out and marry somebody else. And she would be wrong in doing that. The Bible says, “Whosoever shall marry her that is divorced commits adultery.” So Jesus is not trying to excuse the woman here. He is placing the responsibility on the man for what he has done because he has put her away unscripturally. And what Jesus shows in Matthew 19 verse 9 is that if he divorces her for any reason other than fornication and he remarries, he commits adultery too.
Now the implication here is that if he divorces her for fornication and marries someone else, he does not commit adultery. And the same would be true if a woman divorces her husband. If a wife divorces her husband because he has committed fornication, and then she remarries someone else, she does not commit adultery. Why? Because fornication, as Jesus said in Matthew chapter 19, verse 9, is the exception. The exception to the rule is if you divorce and remarry, you commit adultery. The one exception is fornication. These are the only two verses in the Bible that give that reason fornication.
And I bring this up because there are different extremes about this topic. There's the one extreme that we've been talking about for the most part, which says that a person can divorce and remarry for any reason, any number of times. That's not true. That is not Biblical. That is the more common problem that we find today.
But there's still another extreme. The other extreme is people who say that there is no reason for divorce and remarriage. I've talked to Christian people who say that there is no ground for divorce and remarriage, even fornication. Some of them have told me, “Well, if a person's mate commits fornication, they have the right to divorce, but they don't have a right to remarry.” Well, that's not the context of Matthew chapter 5 or Matthew 19, verse 9. In Matthew 19, 9, Jesus said, “Whosoever shall put away his wife, except it be for fornication, and shall marry another, commits adultery.”
Well, this extreme interpretation, which says “Well, you can't marry another, even if it's for fornication” makes Jesus to say this. Here is what Jesus says according to that extreme. “Whosoever shall put away his wife, even if it is for fornication, and marries another commits adultery.” That is twisting what God said, that is twisting Jesus words, and that is not true.
Let's go to Matthew chapter 19 then, and look at Matthew chapter 19, beginning at verse 3. This is a very important commentary on what we're looking at in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5:32. In Matthew 19, verse three, the Bible says, “The Pharisees also came unto him, tempting him.” That is, they were testing him and “saying unto him, is it lawful for a man to put away his wife for every cause?”
Now, as we said, this has been a highly controversial issue for years among these Jews and they want Jesus right in the middle of this controversy. So, the Bible says they ask Him, Is it lawful for a man to do this? The word lawful here means biblical, scriptural. They want to know what Jesus says about this biblically.
Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife for every cause? That is, for any reason whatsoever? That's the issue. That's the question. It's important to remember that because when you get down to verse 9 Jesus answers their question. But sometimes people get lost in the middle of this discussion and they forget what the original question was. Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife for every cause?
Jesus will answer that, but first He takes them back to the beginning, and He says this in verse 4: “He answered and said to them, ‘Have you not read, that He which made them at the beginning made them male and female, and said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife, and they twain shall be one flesh?’”
And in saying those words 2,000 years ago, Jesus drew a firm line and He took a strong stand against any idea of same-sex marriage. Look at the words again. “Have you not read that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female?” That's Genesis 127. He said, “For this cause shall a man leave father and mother and shall cleave to his wife.” That's Genesis 2 verse 24.
So it's interesting that they come to him with a question about divorce and he talks to them about marriage. Why? Because if they had been more serious about marriage and marriage vows, they wouldn't have as much of a problem with divorce as they were having. That needs to be taught today.
But at any rate, in verse 6 he says, “Wherefore they are no more twain,” or two, “but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man put asunder.” They immediately fire back in verse 7 and say, “Why did Moses then command to give a writing of divorcement and to put her away?” They're talking about the same passage that we looked at in Matthew 5 verse 31. They're talking about Deuteronomy chapter 24 verse 1. You see, Jesus gave the rule in verse 6. He said don't do this. “Let not man put asunder.” They said well why then did Moses give this writing of divorcement? Because it said that a man could divorce his wife there. So in verse 8, Jesus answers, “Moses, because of the hardness of your hearts, suffered you to put away your wives.”
Moses allowed this, Jesus said, but from the beginning it was not so. Now, I would urge you to be careful about making too strong of a case on the word command in verse 7 and the word suffered or allowed in verse 8. Sometimes people say, “Well, in verse 7, they said Moses commanded this, but in verse 8, Jesus said Moses allowed it.”
You really can't make a case on the difference in wording there because of Mark chapter 10. Now this is where, in Mark 10 verse 2, they came to Him and said, “Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife, tempting him?” And notice verse 3. “He answered and said to them, what did Moses command you?” This time Jesus is saying what did Moses command you?
“And they said, Moses suffered to write a bill of divorcement and to put her away.” The bottom line is in verse five of Mark chapter 10, “Jesus answered and said to them, For the hardness of your heart, he wrote unto you this precept.” So Deuteronomy chapter 24, verse one was a precept of God. It was written by inspiration of God. Moses didn't write that on his own as his opinion. It was given by divine authority. So the Jews were authorized to do that. But Jesus said, “But from the beginning” [Matthew chapter 19, verse eight] “it was not so,” that is, it wasn't this way. So Jesus came to restore what I would call the Edenic ideal. That is the ideal for marriage given by God in the garden of Eden.
God never intended for all this to happen, but He allowed it because of the hardness of the Jews’ heart. But he said in verse 9, “I say to you, whosoever shall put away that is divorce his wife, except it be for fornication, and shall marry another, commits adultery, and whosoever marries her which is put away does commit adultery.”
Is that literal, physical adultery between a man and a woman? Or is that some kind of figurative, spiritual, symbolic adultery? I've heard, and I've read several times where people say that it's just a figure. It's some kind of spiritual adultery, whatever that might be, but they say it's not really physical adultery.
Well, that's just not true. In the context, Jesus says, “Whosoever shall put away his wife.” Is the wife here a physical, literal person? Yes. Is the husband divorcing her a literal, physical person? Yes. “Except it be for fornication,” Jesus says. Is the fornication literal? Yes. Then he says, “And shall marry another,” another person. Is that other woman literal? Yes. So, if all those things are literal and physical, then so is the adultery that Jesus talks about in this passage.
There are a lot of ways that people have tried to invent to get around what Jesus is saying in these verses, but let's remember what Jesus said in Matthew chapter 24 verse 35: “Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.”
Thank you for listening to My God and My Neighbor. Stay connected with our podcast on our website and on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever fine podcasts are distributed. Tennessee Bible College, providing Christian education since 1975 in Cookeville, Tennessee, offers undergraduate and graduate programs.
Study at your level, aim higher, and get in touch with us today.