COUNTER CULTURE | Week 3 | Sermon

Now again, I I wish that it was that simple, but the truth is is that we know that that marriage, love, divorce, all of this is a really complicated thing. And sometimes we have to remember that the the Bible has spoken on these things, and our and our job is not to go, okay, well, does culture say about these things? Our responsibility is to go, what does the word of God say about these things, and how do we not shy away from it? Because this message is one of those ones that would be much easier to water down.

But the truth is is that this is a hard message that we need to hear and allow the word of God to do what it's supposed to do, to to fall on us like a gentle conviction, and allow that conviction to lead us to repentance, and that repentance will produce in us holiness. K. The big idea that has really always been

from the beginning of time when it comes to this idea of divorce that we're going to see in Matthew chapter 19 today is this big idea. Is that you and I, we can't un one what God has made one. What I mean is that Jesus is going to be asked a question of how and when can we get divorced,

and he's not even gonna really answer the question. He's gonna go back and talk about marriage. He's gonna remind us that in God's original design, it produced oneness, a brand new creation. And it doesn't matter what a lawyer and some courtrooms tell you, you can't un one what God has made one. And divorce,

it's the equivalent of a guy that's got like a splinter in his toe and he makes the decision to cut his leg off because he's got a splinter in his toe. Like there's ways that we could potentially solve this and think and thinking that we can just dissolve this and go back to how we used to be, it misunderstands

what marriage is from the very beginning. Now again,

please stay with me. If you've been through divorce and you're sitting here going, man, you don't know all the circumstances and the situations, just before you start throwing stuff at me in the middle of the message, let me get to the end of this thing and bring it full circle. I'm just gonna tell you what the Bible says about it, and then I'll at the end bring it around to, okay, what does this mean for us, and how do we practically live this out? Amen? Matthew

chapter 19, here's how the story begins today. In verse one, it says that when Jesus had finished saying these things, he left Galilee and he went down to the region of Judea, East of the Jordan River. Large crowds followed him there and he healed their sick. Some pharisees came and tried to trap him with this question.

Should a man be allowed to divorce his wife for just any reason? K. Jesus' ministry is picking up a lot of momentum.

Large crowds are following him. And what happens when Jesus shows up is the same thing that happens today when Jesus the the power of the Holy Spirit shows up to a group of people. Lost people start being found. The sick are healed. Addictions are broken. Marriages are restored. The ministry of reconciliation

of people back to the father is happening. People are being set free. It's an amazing thing and you would think that the church leaders would celebrate that thing. But instead, the church leaders are focused on is trying to trap Jesus.

The bible says that the pharisees come and they ask Jesus a question. If you're new to church, the pharisees were just the guys that were leading the church. They were supposed to be the most holy, the most moral, the most biblically educated, yet they had settled into just positions of power and prominence,

and they were terrified that Jesus' countercultural message was going to take away their power and their control. Because the message that he was preaching was one that was not just about actions, but it was about heart transformations. It was about internal motivations and not just religious activity.

And they didn't like that. Because they were living in a culture in Rome where divorce was rampant. Okay. Historians tells in the first century that Roman men would typically get married and divorced 10 to 12 times in their lifestyle in their lifetime.

Marriage was not a big deal. They it was a really low bar. You could trip over it. You could get out of it easily. And then you have the Jewish faith that comes in that has an incredibly elevated view of marriage that says, no, marriage is a really big deal. But at this time, these Jewish leaders have also started to allow no fault divorce to be rampant in their community as well. And so the reason that Matthew gives us some geographical locations of where this is, is because it also starts to tell us who's in charge of the land that they're in.

And the Pharisees are trying to do anything to get Jesus to stop preaching this counter cultural message that truthfully is coming after their income and their power and their positions, but they can't find any grounds to kill him themselves. So they think based on where they are that they can trap Jesus,

and they can get Jesus to answer a question that will force the Roman government to step in and to do the dirty work for them. See, the leader of this region was a guy named King Herod. King Herod had famously, just a few months before, he married his brother's wife.

And John the Baptist, Jesus' brother, had really publicly and famously called him out and said, you can't do this. You're a leader and there's standards and marriage is a big deal. You can't just marry your brother's wife. King Herod didn't like the challenge to his authority and so he had Jesus' brother put in prison.

Eventually, he would behead him for publicly speaking out against what he did. The Pharisees come to Jesus not because they go, look, this is an issue that we don't understand. Help us understand this. We know that you're God in human form. Help us navigate through this incredibly culturally tense issue,

but instead they come to Jesus with the intent of trapping him. They're trying to get him to make a decision to say something that will force the Roman government to come in and kill him. Most of the time, that's what the Pharisees were doing.

Instead of celebrating all the beautiful ministry that's happening around them and the lives that are being changed in the presence of Jesus, they instead are trying to they're trying to trap him. And Jesus is going to talk about divorce, and it's the same reason we have to talk about divorce today.

Because divorce at at its most rudimentary or elementary level,

divorce is a practical issue. There's a few things we're going to see in this teaching in Matthew 19. The first of that is that divorce, it is a practical issue. And the truth is, is most of us in this room, divorce has been some part of our story.

Maybe we've been divorced ourselves, maybe we grew up in homes where our parents were divorced, Maybe we have friends or loved ones or siblings that have been through divorce, and you've gotten to see or experience

some of the difficulties that are on the other side of divorce. And it is a practical thing we have to talk about both outside of the church and inside of it. How do we deal with this? How do we navigate this? Again, you got to remember this whole time, my goal is not to throw a bunch of shame and condemnation for those of you who have been through divorce.

Truthfully, my my primary audience this morning that I'm speaking to are the single people who are entertaining getting married one day. I I wanna remind you of the incredible high bar that marriage is. And secondarily, my my secondary audience is to those of you who are married today,

whose marriages are are not going amazing, and you are considering getting out of this. My hope is to speak some life into that thing, to give you a little bit of courage to fight like hell to save that marriage because divorce,

it is not as easy as culture will tell you that it is. It is difficult. In front of you is not an easy option and a hard option. You have two hard options. Divorce is incredibly hard. Fighting for your marriage is also hard. But I promise you, this is the lesser of two hard things.

Jesus is asked by a bunch of religious leaders, how do we get to? When is it okay for us to divorce our wives? This is Jesus' response. Verse four, Jesus teaches and he says, haven't you read the scriptures?

Again, this is one of those things when you're reading scripture, you've got to really put yourself into these settings. Jesus is hilarious oftentimes when you read his reactions.

He's responding to the guys that have spent their entire lives reading the scriptures. They ask Jesus a pretty dumb question. He goes, oh, you guys must not read the bible. Like, it's a very condescending response. And Jesus is incredibly funny and sarcastic

multiple times and he goes like, you guys wouldn't ask this dumb question if you read the bible.

Truthfully, there's times when I'm in counseling where I feel like that should be my response to people too. Like you just asked me what? Have you read the Bible? Like, okay, let's start there. Right? Jesus says, haven't you read the scriptures? See the scriptures, they record it from the beginning,

not a new idea, but from the beginning, God made them male and female. And he said this explains why a man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife. And the two are united into one. Since they're no longer two but one, let no one split apart what God has joined together.

See Jesus is asked by the religious leaders, hey, when is it okay to get divorced? Jesus doesn't even talk about divorce and he says, if we're gonna have a conversation about divorce, we've got to talk about marriage. And he reminds everybody listening that marriage, yes, it's a practical issue.

Sorry, divorce is a practical issue, but more than that, it's a biblical issue. See, this is what we have to remember if we're gonna have a conversation about marriage and divorce and how do we navigate this. We have to remember that marriage,

marriage and the family unit being the bedrock, the cornerstone of everything that our communities would be built on, that was not our idea.

Think about it for a second. The concept that you and I, in our limited understanding, we go look, here's what we're gonna do. The fabric of humanity is gonna be, we're gonna take two people.

Two people who who don't think the same, who don't like the same type of food, who can never agree on a place to go eat after church, two people who don't like the same football teams,

two people who are gonna have differing view on differing views on how to raise kids, Two people that don't like the same temperature of the hotel room. Like two people who honestly, the more you think about it, you're like, wait, why are you together? Those two people, we're gonna put them into a relationship

and they can never get out. They have to spend forever together. Oh, yeah. And we're giving them a couple dogs and a couple babies. Terrible idea. Right? Like who thought of this? Jesus reminds us that this was God's creation, not ours.

And if we're gonna talk about how to dissolve it, we have to go back to the beginning to remember God's initial design with it.

And what Jesus does to a bunch of group to a bunch of religious leaders looking for an out, truthfully wanting to justify how they feel and what they already think. I don't like my wife. This isn't easy. I want out of this and I want Jesus to agree with this. Jesus says, let's have a conversation.

And to illustrate what I think Jesus does, I I wanna show you something. Again, I'm a youth pastor at heart. I'm not very smart, so illustrations help me understand things. Okay? Jesus in Matthew chapter 19, he quotes from Genesis chapter one.

And he says, remember in the very beginning, God created all of this. From nothing he spoke, and the pinnacle of his creation was when he looked down and in Hebrew he said, ish. And he spoke Adam into creation.

And he started to realize that as Adam went about his his days and went about his weeks going around with all of what God had created. He was with all of the the kangaroos and the panda bears. He said with all of them, there was not a helpful mate for Adam.

And so what did God do? He put Adam to sleep and from his side, from his rib, he created Ishah, a female. And he created the very first marriage institution.

And then he said in Genesis two, Jesus quotes from Genesis two, and he says, this is the union that the rest of humanity will walk through, where the two individuals will go through the holy process of becoming one. And they will leave their their familial upbringings,

and this will become their primary relationship. It will supersede their relationship with their parents. It will be a relationship more important than theirs with their kids. This will be the most important union of their lives.

The Bible in the New Testament, Ephesians chapter four, Paul says that this is a mystery that we can't understand. I say it every wedding that I do. I remind the crowd. I say, guys, here's the problem with what we're about to see and experience. See, these two couples, these two individuals,

they walked down this aisle and they carried with them all of their individual upbringings, all of their cultural experiences. They also are bringing with them all of their student loan debt, right, all of their car payments, all of that stuff is with them as well.

But what we're about to do in front of their friends, their family, the witnesses of their vows, in front of God, these two are going through a supernatural process that we can't understand. That is symbolic to the way that Jesus relates to his church. It is an interconnectedness

that you cannot comprehend. And I said, here's the danger. So the danger is that the end of these vows and rings exchanging, they're gonna turn around, they're gonna walk back out this aisle into you and I, they're gonna look like they're still two individuals.

But the Bible says that something mysterious and mystical and holy spirit filled has happened. And these two at the altar, they're actually gonna go through a breaking. And what's going to happen in front of you is something you can't see in your eyes, but in the spiritual realm, this is what's taking place.

The two are breaking in front of you and God is actually going to take their two individual lives and he's going to infuse it with the power of his holy spirit and the two, Genesis chapter two, will become one.

And when they walk down this aisle, and for all the gentlemen out there, when they consummate the marriage that night in the wedding suite, they will physically and spiritually become one. And what Jesus is reminding the Pharisees, the reason you ask a question about how and when can I get divorced

is because you fundamentally have forgotten what the original design was in Genesis one and two? Pre Genesis three, pre the fall in the brokenness of humanity, God's design was for oneness.

And now you come and you ask a question of how can I get divorced? He says, you're asking is is how do you take this thing and make it on one again, but it's already been made one. See, I think what's powerful for us to understand,

and those of you who've walked through this, you'll know exactly what I'm talking about because you've experienced it. See, lawyers and culture in the courtrooms will tell us that it's possible to go back and live your own individual lives.

But spiritually, we're doing is we break up the bank accounts and we separate the investment accounts and you take this kid and I'll take this kid. Right? You don't actually do that. Right? You split time with them both. But you separate all of the things.

What you're doing is you're you're trying to make it as equal as possible, but your best attempt to un one this is to go, okay, you take your 50% and I'll take my 50% and we'll go back to how life was before. And then I'll pick up the pieces of who I was and I'll try to put all that back together.

And you try to go about your life and you try to go back to who we are. But the truth is, is man, everything has changed. And it doesn't matter what you do. It doesn't matter how amicable the divorce is. The problem is after divorce, this is you trying to put the pieces of your life back together.

And some of you know exactly what this feels like. And what Jesus is saying is don't think that it's that simple. See the greatest lie that we've been told is we hear things like, hey, your divorce is now final. It's a lie. There's no finality to divorce.

It's why psychologists actually say that oftentimes it's much easier to navigate the death of a spouse than it is a divorce of a spouse. Because at least with death, there's closure.

At least with death, there's finality to it. Divorce is something you have to navigate for the rest of your life, especially if there's kids. And what Jesus is saying is that the reason that you and I ask questions about divorce is because we forget what God's plan was for marriage.

And if we're gonna talk about divorce, we have to have an agreement on what God's plan in Genesis one and two was for marriage. See, God's plan, he shows us four things here that we have to all stack hands on and go, yes, this is what I believe marriage is. See, marriage number one, it is God's idea, it's not ours.

And the bible is abundantly clear. Marriage is for one specific group of people. It is between one man and one woman. Those are the only people who are allowed to enter into a marriage union. And culture will try to tell you, no, no, That's not what they mean.

At every point, if Jesus wanted to redefine and say, no. No. No. Look. You guys have completely misunderstood the old testament. You've missed it. God didn't mean that stuff. In this moment, he would have changed

his stance, but he doesn't. He doubles down and he reminds us, marriage is between one man and one woman. You can have civil unions. You can have different types of agreements but marriage is God's idea. He gets to define this between one man and it's one woman and its goal is to produce oneness.

And from the beginning, was always always always for life.

Pre Genesis three. And this is where the problems come in. It's because in Genesis three, the fall of humanity happens. And Satan understanding that this marriage, this family unit is going to be core and essential to God's plans on this earth. The number one thing he starts to attack, it's that marriage.

And he goes in and he sows discord between Adam and Eve. And he gets them to begin to fight with each other and to hide from God. And in that moment, sin enters the picture. And you and I have been living in the remnants of the post fallen world since then.

But it doesn't mean that God's plan for marriage hasn't always been what it is. And Jesus to a culture that was just as rampant with no fault divorce as ours is, he speaks biblical value over them saying, remember what God's standard is.

And it would have been quiet in the room as he was saying this to all of the Pharisees listening. And now they're going to rebut. The Pharisees are going to listen to this and here's what their natural response is going to be.

It's potentially the same temptation that you and I will have. We'll go, yeah, but what about this? We'll even go to the bible and find one verse pulled out of context and get that verse to support what we think. And you can't do that with the bible. You have to let the totality of scripture speak for itself.

You have to allow all of scripture to interpret scripture. And what these pharisees are doing is they built an entire theological framework around divorce based on one verse that has been misapplied for hundreds of years. But thank God we don't do that anymore. Look at how the Pharisees respond.

The Pharisees verse seven, they say then why why didn't Moses in the law make that he said, why did Moses say in the law that a man could give his wife a written notice of divorce and send her away. Some of your translations will say, why did Moses command that a husband must divorce his wife?

It's like go go and read the bible. They're they're quoting from Deuteronomy 24 and nowhere in there does Moses ever command a man to divorce his wife. But what has happened is, is as humans, we think that our feelings, our thoughts, our ultimates,

and what we'll do is we'll try to find all types of things to support that, even the Bible. And so over hundreds of years, what has happened is these prominent rabbis have risen up and they've misinterpreted Deuteronomy 24. And you have these camps of guys in the first century that have massive following shockingly

that have said, no, no, no, look, Genesis one and two, that's not God's plan today.

Because Deuteronomy 24 says that if you can find any fault with your wife, then it's fine to divorce her. And you had rabbis that actually spelled out what it meant to find fault with your wife. Some of them would say things, you can literally go find the list online. They would say if your wife puts too much salt in your food, divorce her.

If she speaks loudly enough for your neighbors to hear her, you're good to go. Get out of that one. One rabbi went so far to say that if you can find one that's younger and better looking than her, the Bible supports you divorcing her. And shockingly, these dudes have massive followings.

And the crazy part is this is a time where women, you have no legal ability to get divorced. You're essentially one step above property, but legally you couldn't initiate a divorce. It was only men that could start the process of divorce. And I wanna read to you Deuteronomy 24,

all four verses that they're misapplying here. Because what Moses was doing is he was addressing men who were abandoning their wives because they refused to take care of them. They refused to serve their wife sacrificially

like Jesus serves his church. And instead of taking care of them, they would just abandon them. And so Moses makes a concession to say, if you're gonna do that, at least give her a piece of paper and set her free so she can start over with her life.

And then he writes some like rules around what remarriage looks like if she decides to come back. Okay. Deuteronomy 24, here's the verses that they're misapplying.

It says, suppose a man, verse one, suppose a man marries a woman but she does not please him having discovered something wrong with her, he writes a document of divorce and hands it to her and sends her away from his house. When she leaves his house, she's free to marry another man. But if the second husband also turns against her, writes a document of divorce, hands it to her and sends her away,

or if he dies, the first husband may not marry her again for she has been defiled. That would be detestable to the Lord. You must not bring guilt upon the land the Lord your God is giving you as a special possession. See what is happening is over hundreds of years, Moses' concession has become a command.

Moses' concession to a bunch of hard necked and sinful people who weren't willing to uphold what was the agreed upon standard that marriage was for all of our lifetime. You cannot walk away from it outside of a couple of exceptions.

But because they didn't wanna do that, they were just abandoning these wives and they were literally stuck in no man's end. They couldn't continue on with their life. And so Moses said, let's at least give them a bill of divorce so that they can move

on. But you better not believe that that is the bible saying that God is for divorce because you have too much salt in your food. But it just tells me that you and I, we are capable of convincing ourselves of anything if we wanna get out of something.

And I'm telling you the majority of the marriages that I sit with that are in crisis, the majority of people that I'm sitting in counseling with, there's been no major moral violation.

There's no sexual immorality. There's no abuse. There's no drug addiction. There's no anything that you would go, okay, this this would make sense. Most of the time it's just that I think I married the wrong person. This isn't as easy as I thought. We just don't communicate right. We don't get things together.

And what you forget that you've been invited into in marriage is the most incredible opportunity to see all of your flaws and all of your shortcomings. And what marriage is supposed to be is it's really actually this invitation to sanctification.

It's why Paul and Ephesians will say, husbands, your your job in marriage is to lay down your life for your wife. Just like Jesus would lay down his life for the church. That's how you are to love her sacrificially.

If it costs you every part of your pride, lay it down. Because the marriage that you can build can be incredible if you're willing to die to yourself. And then he says, women, you're going to have to fight to honor, respect, and serve your husband.

Even though they're potentially going to have moments where what they're doing, their leadership,

it it would not cause you to naturally wanna respect and follow them. But you will have to fight against your own pride and be willing to serve them. And the tension that happens when marriages start to fall apart is two people dig in, they go, I'm not going first. You don't love me, so I don't respect you. Well, you go, you don't respect me, so I don't love you.

And the tension is is which one of you is willing to go first. Who's willing to actually serve the other one when the other person hasn't deserved it?

And what happens in marriages is really all the things as a single person that you've been you've been able to just go through life with, all the parts of you that you think are awesome, that nobody else thinks are awesome. When you're married and somebody's living with you, you're gonna have to face those things.

And your flesh is gonna tell you, but that's how I've always been. You deal with them. You need to get over it. Or you can go the way of Christ and say, no, no, I'm willing to work on this stuff. I'm willing to figure this out.

And I will be on my face in prayer helping, asking the Holy Spirit to help me navigate through this. And I promise you, two people who are on their face before Jesus asking him to work in their marriage that are praying together, I cannot imagine a lot of those are ending up in divorce.

But when our pride sets in, divorce becomes the only option, then what happens is we come back and we go, okay, what does the bible say? And we realize, man, divorce is divorce has always always been and always will be an incredibly controversial issue inside of the church.

If you didn't know it, let let me just tell you, there is not a tighter tight rope to try to navigate than the topic of divorce because there's people that are like, you just need to beat everybody over the head and tell them they they can never get divorced.

And other people like, well, you gotta give them all the grace and the understanding like it it is a controversial issue. We just have to understand that. But we can also go, but look at look at what Jesus says. K? This is their rebuttal to Jesus. Jesus responds to them. Verse eight,

and he says, yes, Moses permitted divorce as a concession to your hard hearts, but it is not what God had originally intended. And here's the throat punch of all throat punches. He says, and I tell you this, whoever divorces his wife and marry somebody else commits adultery. That one hurts.

Here's the out. Okay. He does give us an exclusion. Here's the exception. He says, unless his wife has been unfaithful. The scriptures tell us there are two reasons to biblically get divorced. Jesus right here gives us the first.

If there is again, in the original language, Jesus is saying he's talking about sexual immorality that's like ongoing unrepentance. They're not seeking reconciliation.

If that is the marriage you are in, it's become abusive and they're just taking advantage of you, that gives you biblical reason to get out. First Corinthians tells us that if you have a spouse who has abandoned you,

that is also biblical reason to end the marriage. But those are the only two biblical reasons for you to get out of a marriage if you are married and you are a follower of Christ.

He says, anything else for you to get out because you don't like it or you don't think this is what's best for you and this is the wrong person. He says to actually get married, you are now living as an adulterer.

And he says something to a room full of people that everybody's sitting there going, okay, what does this mean for me then? What does this practically mean for me who got divorced fifteen years ago? Jesus reminds us at the end of the day, divorce, it it really actually is a moral issue. It's a sin issue.

And that's not a fun message to preach. Nobody was cheering when Jesus made that point for them. Right? But here's the good news about Jesus making divorce and remarriage a sin issue and a moral issue. It means that if it's a sin issue, then what Jesus did on the cross was enough to pay the penalty for our sin.

That if it really is a sin issue, then it means that it's forgivable.

And it means that if you've walked through divorce, that doesn't mean you just have shame on you for the rest of your life and this is your scarlet letter to wear. No. No. No. It means that the blood of Jesus can cover that and you can actually walk in freedom if you repent of it and acknowledge that this was a mistake and this wasn't what's best, and you invite Jesus into your heart. The Bible says that that sin can be covered just like all of our sin can be covered.

But let's not forget that because the grace of God covers it, that God still doesn't hate it. And the reason that he hates divorce is because

of how much it hurts us. How much it hurts us and how much it hurts the people connected to us. See, all the way back in the old testament, the prophet Malachi told us. Look at what Malachi

says in chapter two. It says, for I hate divorce, says the Lord. He says, to divorce your wife is to overwhelm her with cruelty. He says, so guard your heart and do not be unfaithful to your wife.

I just wanna share a couple statistics with you that I found this week of the reality of what sociologists tell us happened inside of the the hearts of children that are in homes where their parents have been divorced. It says that children of divorce are fifty percent more likely to develop physical health problems.

Teens and single parent and blended families are three hundred percent more likely to need psychological health. It says children with divorced parents are twice as likely to attempt suicide.

Children of multiple divorces receive lower grades than their peers. Children of divorce are twice as likely to drop out of high school. I don't say those to speak all of this over your life to go, hey, man, I got divorced ten years ago. What am I supposed to do about this?

The grace and the power of the Holy Spirit can invade anything and begin to rewrite stories at any moment. But I do wanna remind us that reason that God hates divorce is because it is devastating to the people that are impacted by it.

It hurts and its reaches are far much wider than we realize and some of you know that firsthand. And the truth is, is if we just married the wrong person and we could find the right person, then second marriages would have a higher success rate than first marriages.

But our national average of divorce for first marriages is forty to fifty percent. You know what second marriages are? Sixty to seventy percent, followed only by third marriages that are eighty to eighty five percent. So the notion that we just need to find the right person is a flawed notion.

Maybe you need to take a hard look in the mirror and face yourself and deal with the things that are causing tension between your spouse, and then begin to walk through the process of reconciliation with them. But don't just give up.

Jesus' disciples are listening to this thing. Some of them are single men, And and look at how they respond to Jesus as we kinda close this out. Verse 10, Jesus's disciples hear this whole tense conversation. They go, if this is the case, it's better not to get married. Like, amen. Let's close in prayer. Right? Like,

that that actually is a very realistic and sober response to the incredibly high bar of marriage. See, I think the problem that that I realized as a college pastor and young adults pastor spent a lot of time with young people in the church. And they had been told through the the church's messaging

that marriage is the greatest thing and your life will be fulfilled then. And you can just start having sex all the time. It's gonna be easy. It's gonna be awesome. Just run to marriage. And the truth is is most of them naively stepped into marriage way too quickly. Even though I would sit there on premarital counseling going, wait. Like you guys gotta figure some stuff out. They're like, no, but we can have sex then. So they get married.

And then three weeks after getting married, they're like, wait. Don't think I like this person. This isn't fun anymore. And then the reality of being married sets in. And the truth is that we should have a sober response to this. We should count the cost of what we're stepping into.

And marriage is amazing. Don't hear what I'm not saying. But you can also live an incredibly purpose filled life and be a single person as well. Marriage is not ultimate,

even though it is an incredible thing. Jesus responds to his disciples, last couple verses, verse 11. He says, it's true, not everyone can accept this statement. Only those whom God helps. And then he says, some people are born as eunuchs,

some have been made eunuchs by others, and some choose not to marry for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Let anyone except this who can. If you don't know what eunuch is, ask your parents after church. They'll explain that to you. It's short for unicorn. They'll give you the details.

Jesus doubles down and he goes, it's right. Sometimes being single is the way you should do this. If you if you know you are a selfish and prideful person that is not gonna work on you, marriage is gonna be hard for you. If you struggle with immorality

and sexual promiscuity now as a single person, don't think that's gonna magically go away and count the cost of the damage you're gonna drag into your marriage if you don't deal with these issues now as a single person. For those of you who are already married,

let me tell you marriage is an incredibly big deal. Divorce is not the easy option out. You have resources available to you. Let us come around you and let us help you. This is where we can wrap our arms around you and help you navigate this season. Just because your marriage has been hard for the last few months doesn't mean your marriage has to be hard forever. There are ways to figure this out. But also please don't hear what I'm not saying. If you are here and you're in an abusive marriage,

come to us and let us help you navigate through this. Let us help you get safe and get out of this. You cannot stay in something that's broken because it says some arbitrary law that you have to stay married forever, not when it's abusive. That is not what the scripture say.

And let me tell all of you who are here who have gone through divorce. Let me remind you of the good news of Jesus. K. This is the good news is that none of us none of us in this room are gonna get to heaven because of what we've done.

And if you've been through divorce, that means you're welcome in the group of broken people that we are all a part of. The good news of the gospel is that we don't get to spend eternity with God because of what we've done. And it means that even if we've gone through divorce and we've broken God's law, that means that we have something that we can be forgiven of. And let me remind all of you here this morning who would be tempted to go because you've never walked through divorce yourself that somehow you are better than all the second class divorcees amongst us. And that you're using to go around and dunk on all of them for the rest of your Christian experience.

Let me remind you that today might not be your day, but all of us, every single one of us have at least one page in the Bible that we didn't get right. We have a part of our story that I could put up here and read and put your mail out there as well. Our job is to love people in their brokenness,

not rub their faces in their brokenness. I close by reading a story to you from Billy Graham that I love that he would use often his sermons when he would go preaching in crusades. He said, as a boy,

growing up in the city of Boston, my friend Alan Emery had a powerful experience that made a deep impression upon me. He said his father had received a call from a well known Christian pastor

who'd been found drunk on the sidewalk. He says immediately without hesitation, his father sent his chauffeured limousine to pick up the man. He said while his mother prepared the best guest room that they had in their house. He said my friend watched wide eyed as the beautiful covers on the bed were turned down on an exquisite four post bed, revealing the most incredible monogram sheets. And the little boy said, but mom, he's drunk.

He might even get sick on the bed. His mom said, I know, but this man has slipped and fallen and when he comes to, he's gonna be so ashamed. He's gonna need loving encouragement that we can give him. The response of the church to people who find themselves on the other side of shameful decisions

is to put our arms around you and love you back into the fold.

You are welcome here in the middle of your brokenness and in the middle of your mess. God loves you. The good news of the gospel is that, yes, we live in the Genesis three fallen and broken world, but Jesus has made a way for you and I to have life and life to the full. Your past doesn't have to define you. The worst moments of your life, they are not your identity.

And if you've walked through really, really difficult divorces like I've walked through with people, let me remind you that there can be incredible days ahead of you and that God's best is still in front of you. Because in Jesus, that is the promise for all of humanity. Amen? Let me pray for you. Father,

father, I thank you for grace. Father, I thank you for mercy. Father, I thank you that your word, even though it can be hard, it is clear. And father, we refuse to water it down.

God, would you let conviction sit on our hearts that leads us to repentance, that produces holiness in us. But father, right now, I remind everybody here that it is not flesh and bones that we wage war with, but spirits and principalities, and the enemy is gonna try to keep not conviction,

but judgment and shame on us. And father, we refuse to receive any of that because Romans eight tells us there is no longer any condemnation for those who are in Christ. Our decisions are not our identity, but the finished work of the cross, that's who we are. And so father, we walk in freedom.

We walk with our heads held high regardless of what has happened because, Jesus, you are enough. It is in the mighty and holy name of Jesus all God's people said, amen and amen. Hey, you guys are amazing.