Psalm 122 says, I was glad when they said to me, let us go unto the house of the Lord. And over the last couple of weeks, my family was traveling. We were on the East Coast seeing my wife's family for the most part. And we were not here in the gathering. And it just renews my conviction that we were meant to be together.
We are meant as Christians to do this together. We as Christians are not meant to do this alone. And I think we've experienced some of that over the last year, trying to do some of it alone. We are not built to do this alone. And I think we see that in the joys of life, right?
When we get to welcome new members, it's like, man, this is good. We're meant to celebrate. We're meant to have lots of food, which will hopefully come back at some point soon. But we're meant to celebrate and rejoice with one another. We're also meant to carry burdens with one another.
We're meant to mourn with the Moreno family as we rejoice Richard is with the Lord, but are grieved that he is not with us. We're not meant to carry— you just feel the weight of a burden like that. Nobody can carry that alone. We are meant to do this together. And so I just want to encourage you, church, over the last year, if over the last year your connection, your conviction that we're meant to do this together has gotten stretched or strained a little bit, press in, believe what the Lord says.
You know, over the last year we've had to make so many lame safety announcements. Lame meaning that just there— I wish that wasn't a big part of what we had to talk about over the last year. And some of the things we announced, people cheered, and some of the people— and it seems like every announcement we've made about safety, related to safety, nobody in the church is like, I love all of that. Like most people are either like no, or mostly no, or some no, right? Like it's hard to get a group of people in which everybody is all in on any particular decision.
And in addition to that, there's been a lot of cultural upheaval over the last year. So as we come back together, as we interact with people at community group, interact with people just personally, you may have some of that sort of scar tissue from the last year. Either culturally or distance or whatever. And let us keep our conviction, church, that we are not meant to do this alone. We are meant to do this together.
Amen. Well, let's open together to Mark chapter 10. We are continuing our study on the book of Mark, and we're gonna take at least a couple of weeks on this section of scripture. This part of Mark is in the shadow of Jesus saying that I'm gonna go to the cross, I'm gonna die and I'm gonna rise again. And every person that follows me, every disciple that follows me will walk that same path.
He says, take up your cross and follow me, follow me to death and follow me to life. And Jesus is applying that to various areas. And so today we're gonna look at the issue of marriage and gender and singleness and sex and divorce. And see what Jesus calls us to do together. Now, this is one of those things I was talking to Marian after the first service, and she said, the good news is with passages like this, which are culturally controversial, our pastors are just the messenger.
I'm the mailman, okay? So I'm about to read the mail. And if you don't like the mail, don't throw stuff at me. All right? But I think what we'll see is that this is good mail.
This is for our good. This is for his glory.
This is Mark chapter 10. This is God's Word.
Verse 1: And he left there— Jesus left there and went to the region of Judea and beyond the Jordan, and crowds gathered to him again. And again, as was his custom, he taught them. And Pharisees came up and in order to test him asked, 'Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?' He answered them, 'What did Moses command you?' And they said, 'Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of divorce and to send her away.' Then Jesus said, 'Because of your hardness of heart he wrote you this commandment. But from the beginning of creation God made them male male and female. Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.
So they are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.' And in the house, the disciples asked him again about this matter. This is God's word.
And Lord, I pray that you'd give us ears to hear, give us eyes to see. Lord, may we receive, may we rejoice in, may we worship as we see your design for our lives and for gender and for marriage and for so many aspects of life today.
I pray that you would lay out the path of life before us in Jesus' name, amen.
6 · The pastor introduces an illustration from The Avengers, signaling a shift into illustrative mode and self-deprecatingly acknowledging the risk of pop culture references
In one of the— this is always a risk. I'm gonna start my message with a quote from The Avengers.
7 · The pastor uses a scene from The Avengers where Drax asks 'Why is Gamora?' to illustrate how Jesus bypasses the how/what/where questions about divorce to ask the more fundamental 'why' question about marriage's existence
So The Avengers, there's this great scene in The Avengers where, and none of this is important, but they're looking for a green alien lady named Gamora. Okay, so one character bursts into the room and yells, "Where's Gamora?" And somebody, not knowing who that is, replies, "What's Gamora?" "Gamora." And another character replies, "Who's Gamora?" And then to get in on the action, Drax the Destroyer, the most literal person in the galaxy, replies, "Why is Gamora?" Right, he just goes existential.
Who is she? What is she? Why is she, right? And it's a great, it's one of the best lines in movie history, I think. And in this way, Jesus is a little bit like Drax the Destroyer in this way, that rather than engaging in the details of the conversation about marriage and divorce, where people are asking questions, when can I divorce?
How do I do it? What does it mean? Et cetera, et cetera. He goes all the way back to why does marriage exist in the first place? And in this way, our culture needs this.
8 · The pastor argues that contemporary debates about marriage (where/how/what) miss the more fundamental question Jesus asks: why does marriage exist? He critiques both cultural and church-based approaches for starting downstream from God's design
We need this because we often, don't start there, right? We— a lot of our conversation culturally and even in the church is, where is marriage supposed to take place? Is it supposed to take place between a man and a woman? Can there be multiple people involved? Can it be two men?
Can it be two women? Like, what— how do we— where can marriage take place? Or most often in churches, we start with, how is marriage supposed to take place? Here's 5 tips to a better marriage, 10 steps to reignite the passion in your life, right? Like, we— that's where the church often spends a lot of its time.
And sometimes we back up and say, "Well, what is marriage?" And that's being discussed culturally, right? Is this an outdated relic, this lifelong monogamy? I've heard multiple people say this is an outdated relic of a past civilization we're still trying to live out. Jesus says, "Go one step further back. Ask, why does marriage exist in the first place?"
9 · The pastor cites Donald English to reinforce the theological move: Jesus goes behind legal debates to God's original intention for marriage
Donald English, a commentator on this passage, says this, Jesus cuts through the discussion of details or the points of legal declarations and points to the heart of the matter: God's will and purpose.
The real question is, what did God intend by giving marriage in the first place?
10 · The pastor directly addresses non-Christians and seekers, acknowledging their assumptions and inviting them to listen to Jesus' own teaching rather than secondhand summaries
Now look, if you're here and you're not a Christian, or maybe you're new to church, or maybe you're exploring this stuff, you probably have a lot of assumptions about, okay, I I know what he's gonna say next, or I know what this is, you know, and maybe you're even curious about like, what is the Christian view of marriage? I hear so many different things. I want you to hear from Jesus himself, Jesus himself. A lot of times in our culture, people may not like the church, may not like all the commands, but they like Jesus.
There's something compelling about Jesus. So listen to Jesus himself today.
11 · The pastor announces a structural pivot, limiting today's sermon to the foundational 'why' of marriage and deferring the application questions (divorce, sex, singleness) to next week
Now, what we're gonna do is, you guys are, ahead of the first service in that I only got through like half my message in the first service. So I'm gonna actually give up and just try to do half the message, okay? So what we're doing today is we're gonna talk about the assumptions, the why of marriage that Jesus starts with.
And then next week, we'll begin to get to the details of divorce. Can this person get divorced? What about cases like this? What about cases like that? We're gonna get much more next week, probably into sex, singleness or even same-sex attraction and some of these other issues.
But today, we're gonna start where Jesus starts. We're gonna start with the why of marriage.
12 · The pastor expounds the Pharisees' rhetorical strategy in Mark 10—posing divisive questions to erode Jesus' popularity—and Jesus' characteristic move of reframing the question entirely
Now, in Mark chapter 10, the Pharisees continue a pattern. They do not like Jesus' popularity. And so what they continue to do is to pose thorny questions to Jesus that have two sides.
And what they're trying to do is get Jesus to side with one group or the other so that the second group doesn't like him anymore. 'Cause they think, man, if we could just keep doing this, we'll just keep cutting in half his popularity as we go. And Jesus, as he so often does, sees through their question and sees that they're asking the wrong question to begin with.
13 · The pastor identifies the specific Old Testament text and interpretive controversy behind the Pharisees' question—what counts as 'indecency' in Deuteronomy 24:1
Now, the controversy they're trying to bring him into is over the meaning of Deuteronomy 24:1, which speaks to the circumstances of divorce. It says, 'When a man takes a wife and marries her, if then she finds no favor in his eyes because he has found some indecency in her, and he writes her a certificate of divorce and sends her out.' And then he goes on and describes, you know, what she's allowed to do in terms of marriage, and can the man take her again to be his wife, etc.
So much of the controversy is over that word 'indecency.' He finds no favor because he has found some indecency. And so on one side, you had one school that basically said, "Okay, indecency is sort of the, you know, very clear sexual immorality, only in these cases." And there was another school, so that's more of the Pharisee school. The other school is probably more, not exactly, but sort of the Sadducee school, which was that they said indecency is anything the man finds indecent, which in some interpretations included burning food consistently. They were like, "That is indecent. That food is indecent.
And if she finds no favor in my eyes, and that's it." Right?
14 · The pastor explains Jesus' reframing move: rather than choosing a side in the Deuteronomy debate, Jesus returns to Genesis to ask about marriage's original purpose
And so they're asking Jesus, "So who—?" And he knows, you know, that there may be people divorced there, and he's going to isolate people by taking one or another side. And Jesus sees through their question and he goes, "You're starting in the wrong place. You're starting with divorce." In fact, what you should be starting with is marriage. Divorce was never supposed to exist.
It exists because this is a fallen world. It exists because of the hardness of human hearts. You should, rather than starting in the rest of Exodus, you should go back to Genesis, Genesis 1 and 2, and ask, why is marriage?
15 · A brief transition signaling the shift from exegetical setup to theological exposition of marriage's design
So we're gonna look a little bit at the design of marriage today.
16 · The pastor begins re-reading the text with emphasis on 'from the beginning of creation,' preparing to exegete this phrase as the key to Jesus' argument
Now, Jesus said to them, because of your hardness of heart, he wrote you this commandment. But from the beginning of creation.
17 · The pastor identifies 'creation' as the most important word in the passage, arguing that it establishes God as the designer of marriage
Now I'm willing to bet when you read verse 6, a lot of things stood out to you. God made them male and female. The other parts stand out to you. Therefore, a man shall leave his father.
You're probably thinking lots of things. I want to point your attention to a word that you probably overlooked as we read that. That word may be the most important word in this section, and it is the word Creation. Creation. It starts with an assumption that God created marriage, that God is behind the why of marriage.
The why of marriage finds its meaning in God's design for marriage.
18 · The pastor contrasts three views of marriage's origin: historical (society creates marriage), modern (individuals create marriage), and biblical (God creates marriage)
Now, this is incredibly important because the historical view of marriage is that societies created marriage. If you talk to a sociologist or somebody like that, they may say, "Well, this culture developed marriage in this way and they worked it out this way because these were— this was what the culture was like and therefore marriage corresponded to these rules." Or social constructs grew up and that's what marriage is. So, it was defined differently from society to society. But the modern view is that we've moved beyond that, that marriage is no longer kind of coming from a society imposed on people, that rather we as modern rugged individualists, we decide what marriage means.
We, freed from the shackles of society, each individually define what marriage is. They say, "Why does this society get the right to tell me how to live marriage or relationships?" And we're half right. In this, the society doesn't get to tell us how to live marriage. One of the phrases I hate the most, and I'm sorry if you've used this before, but I hate the phrase traditional marriage. You know why?
'Cause it just means, well, it's traditional. A lot of things are traditional that are incredibly stupid and/or sinful. We gotta have a different reason for doing marriage the way we do it other than, well, tradition says this, right? Right? That's meaningless.
So I'm siding with the modernists there, but I'm siding against them in that their view is— the modern view is sort of that we can create marriage to be whatever we want. No, this is radically counterculture. It says, "From the beginning of creation," and it lays out God's design for marriage. God designed marriage. Marriage.
The why of marriage flows from God.
19 · The pastor uses a personal story about his son's preference for building Legos according to the designer's instructions rather than improvising from a pile of parts
Now, my two boys love Legos, and does anybody have this experience? If you ever played with Legos, you get a Lego set, your kids get a Lego set, and no judgment if you're an adult with a Lego set, this illustration applies equally to you. You have a Lego set, and you build it, and you start to lose some of the pieces, or you start to mess with it, your kids start to mess with it, and then eventually the thing breaks down, and then it goes into the pile. Does anybody have one of those at home?
One pile of Legos. It's just like whatever, space, jungle, fantasy, knight, whatever pile. And you make things out of that pile. But one of my sons has always been really committed to, once it goes in the pile, I'm no longer interested in it. And his brother loves to make things out of the pile, come up with things.
But I remember he made this comment one time, 'cause I was like, well, why don't you make something out of the pile? You know, it doesn't have to be what came in the box. And he looked at me with disappointment and just said, "It's never as good as when you use the map." Like, like, I can sit here all day, Dad, and try to make a robot, but it's never as good as this robot 'cause somebody made this and they had all the pieces together. And he's a very orderly kid, right?
20 · The pastor applies the Lego illustration to marriage, arguing that human attempts to rearrange or redefine marriage fall short of God's original design
And in that way, I think that applies to marriage, that God designed marriage, that we can pull apart and swap the pieces of marriage and rearrange it and remix it in all these different ways, but it is not what God designed.
And the beauty of marriage only rings out when we live it out according to God's design for it.
21 · The pastor announces the sermon's two-part structure: God created gender, and God created marriage
So, two elements today. This is really all we're gonna get to today, two elements. First, God created marriage. Gender.
22 · The pastor re-reads the text with emphasis on 'God made them male and female,' preparing to expound God's design for gender as foundational to understanding marriage
That's what it says. From the beginning of creation, God made— there's that word again— God made them male and female.
23 · The pastor contrasts contemporary gender ideology (flattening distinctions or treating gender as a social construct) with the Bible's simple affirmation that God made men and women
Now, the cultural impulse today is that all distinctions between genders should be erased because distinctions between genders are are bad. So we should flatten them out and have no thing that one gender is supposed to do or can do or should do that another gender cannot do. Or we go a step further and we basically say all of it is a social construct and I should get to create whatever sort of gender identity or sort of— I should be able to express however I want to express whatever I want to express.
In terms of what I am as a human being. The Bible is gloriously simple but incredibly offensive in its simple statement: God made men and God made women.
24 · The pastor reframes gender distinctions not as limiting boxes but as stereo sound—two channels creating a richer, fuller image of God than either could produce alone
Now, at first, you might be tempted to look at that from a limiting perspective, as though God is saying, "You can only be this box or this box. Don't change the boxes," right? We're like, "Well, who gives you the right to say which box I—" you know, Why did I have to be this box?
But it's missing the point. The point is this: God, in his infinite glorious wisdom, made something that displays and rings out his glory and his image in us in a unique, powerful way that is different than stars and galaxies and black holes. All of the glory of that stuff is great, but God's image God's image in humanity rings out a unique glory through male and female. Think about it this way. There is a— I remember the first time, years ago, when we finally got stereo sound in our living room, right?
Like, you get a little soundbar or something. And you don't realize up until then, like, you know, there's— or maybe many of us, like, you realize when you get your first Walkman, I'm losing everybody in Gen Z and younger. Okay, just stick with me. It's an ancient technology. It's like a record that we shrunk and stuck to our hip for a while, I don't know.
And you put the headphones on and you realize, okay, before I heard the guitar and the drums and everything's just kind of coming straight at me. But now I put the Walkman on and the guitar's over here and the drums are over here. Right? And the piano's over here and the guy singing is over here. And it's like, where are they?
You know, they sound over here and over here. And it's the same song, but it's like you're hearing it for the first time because it's coming together in stereo, right? Is anybody tracking with this? The Gen Zers are so confused. They're like, what is any of this?
He's trying to talk to me, appreciate his heart, don't understand. Hang in there. Stereo, right? God has seen fit that his image would ring out in humanity, not in mono, but in stereo. That there would be a unique glory as men and women, as males and females, as brothers and sisters, as fathers and mothers, as grandfathers and grandmothers, as they in unique and specific ways ring out the glory of God The image of God resounds in creation in a unique and powerful way.
This is God's design. In a recent article I'm gonna send out this week to the church, I'm gonna probably put it on the blog right after church and then send it out, Andrew Wilson traces the pattern present in all of creation and in all the Bible. He says this, complementarity, which means a relationship or situation in which two or more different things improve or emphasize each other's qualities is written into creation. There is a fit, a mutual enhancement, a beautiful difference at the heart of what God has made. And he goes through everything from— he goes through creation and the pattern of creation where you have one thing and then this thing and the pairs present throughout all creation.
He goes through the images of scripture and how they're complementary. He even goes into language. And so English speakers, we like miss all of this, but so many languages are gendered, right? And have complements. So you have like el sol, la luna, right?
La tierra, el cielo, right? These patterns of male, female that are woven into human language. And he concludes this: "Men need women, women need men, and the image of God is expressed as both serve together. Remove either or diminish the value of either, and we are all impoverished."
25 · The pastor critiques the church's tendency to fixate on specific role distinctions (leadership, submission) and calls for a step back to see the overall glory of God's design
I think there's sometimes overly in the church a fixation on the specific places of difference where you say, okay, well, in the church, what can men do and what can only men do and what are women allowed to do? Or in marriage, you know, what does it mean that the man is the leader of a home or the women or wives are to support their husbands or bring— be helpers to their husbands?
Or what does that mean? And we fixate on those things. And I want to back us up a bit and see the design overall is glorious. What is this? Right?
Those questions are important. We'll get to some of those things, but there is a unique glory.
26 · The pastor illustrates gender complementarity through a personal story of his father interacting with his niece (tender care) and his son (roughhousing)
Just yesterday, my niece had a birthday and she is so different than my 3 boys. I have 3 boys and it's like when you get boys together, they become just more boy, if that's even possible. And she stands apart as this glorious, perfect little girl.
And you see the unique stereo quality of the image of God. Right, where my dad is the abuelo, the grandfather. He, at one point, I remember him tenderly kind of placing a necklace or something on Coco. And you just think, oh, it's unique that he's a grandfather. It's different than her grandmother.
And then a minute later, you know, my dad is relating to my youngest son who's almost 2. And the way they're relating is not kind of that gentle. Kind of care way, they're hitting a pillow together. I mean, I come in and my dad is going, "Foom!" And then my 2-year-old's going, "Foom, haha!" And my dad hits the pillow again, and he hits the pillow again, "Haha!" And he's laughing and becoming more and more hyped up. He's hitting the pillow with both hands.
And I'm like, what is happening, right? A minute ago, this grandfather is just tenderly caring, you know, and the werewolves, and you see it's stereo. Right? It's male and female, brother, sister, husband, wife, right? It's ringing out in creation.
27 · The pastor synthesizes the gender section with a dual claim: gender displays God's glory and secures our good
The point is this, that God has designed gender to display his glory. He's also designed gender to be for our good, that we flourish within our God-given, our God-created roles as men and women. When we live out his design. We'll talk a bit more about that next week, but I want you to see we're to love this, rejoice in this, worship over this. The point of this is not primarily controversy.
The point of this is worship.
28 · The pastor transitions from gender to marriage, maintaining the 'God made' framework as the controlling rubric
All right, second thing: God made marriage. God made marriage.
29 · The pastor reiterates Jesus' move from divorce to marriage and reformulates the 'why' question as 'who is marriage for?'—setting up the next major section
Remember, this whole question around divorce, Jesus brings back not to the specifics of divorce, but to to marriage itself. Why does marriage exist?
And really the question is, who is marriage for?
30 · The pastor expounds the structure of Jesus' argument in Mark 10:6-9, noting how it is bracketed by divine action ('God made
And notice the way that Jesus walks through this. He says, okay, God made them male and female. Therefore, a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife. And the two shall become one flesh.
Flesh. So they are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate. So it starts with God made, and then he lays out the pattern. And it ends with Jesus not quoting the Old Testament, but giving a new pronouncement that what therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.
So it's bracketed by these statements. God made it. 'God joined it together, let it not be broken,' right? This is reemphasizing God designed marriage, God made marriage.
31 · The pastor surveys historical views of marriage's purpose: marriage for the community (progeny, dynasty) and marriage for the man (his pleasure and comfort)
Now, this gets at the question, who is marriage for?
Now, in many cultures, it was a marriage for them, marriage is for them kind of culture. What I mean by that is the marriage is for the community, marriage is for progeny, marriage is for the family. The society, right, in medieval times, if you read any medieval literature, which you probably don't, but if you happen on a Saturday afternoon to think, you know what, I'm gonna break out the Canterbury Tales here, like, what you'll see is that the pattern is that romantic affection always occurs outside of the marital relationship. Because in that society, there was kind of an emphasis that marriage exists to continue the line of kings or to, you know, marry for status or station, or, you know, to create children, to create heirs, or whatever. But if you want to find somebody to love you, you got to look outside.
Marriage is not for the two people, it's for the community. Or in some cultures, sadly, it became marriage is for you, and primarily you meaning the man, that marriage is for the pleasure and comfort of the man, that the woman is almost a passive tool for the man to achieve pleasure or children or whatever, and were ungodly in an ungodly way structured that way, we rightly see that and we rightly reject it.
32 · The pastor identifies the modern default: marriage is for individual self-fulfillment
Now, the default today is that marriage is for me. So we think ourselves more evolved and we say, you know what, marriage is not for society, it's not for men, it's for me, right?
33 · The pastor deconstructs the famous 'you complete me' line from Jerry Maguire, exposing its selfishness beneath the romantic veneer
You think of that Jerry Maguire quote, "you complete me," right?
You think like, oh, it's at the pinnacle of the romantic movie, "you complete me." And it sounds romantic, and you know, they're embracing, whatever, but you back up and you're like, wait a minute, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait a minute here. What he's saying is, I'm an individual, this is my life, and the reason I want us to be together is because I wanna be completed, right? He's not saying anything about like, man, I just feel called to love. And serve you, and I wanna, you know, protect you and help you. He's basically like, look, despite my reservations, I need this to be super happy, right?
So you wanna get together or what, right?
34 · The pastor argues that 'you complete me' thinking produces a zero-sum contest where two incomplete people compete to extract what they need from each other, which is why modern marriage fails
That, I mean, like, it sounds romantic, but saying you complete me is incredibly, and at the core of it, selfish. I need you, and then we wonder why modern marriage doesn't work, 'cause you have two people saying, well, I wanna be complete, so I need some stuff from you. Well, I wanna be complete, so I need I'm gonna pick something else up from you. And what does marriage become?
Like, I wanna be complete. No, I wanna be complete. No, I wanna be complete, right? That's what marriage becomes.
35 · The pastor presents Jesus' alternative: marriage creates a 'we' that transcends the two 'me's
Jesus says neither, I mean, none of those is right.
He offers a totally different paradigm. He says this, therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. Meaning it's a different design that they create, In coming together, they create something new. It's not just me and me. There is a we that is created in God's design.
And again, emphasize God's design. This is God's design.
36 · The pastor introduces the controlling thesis of the marriage section: marriage is fundamentally for God, not for me or even for us
So we could say that before marriage is for me, before marriage is even for you, marriage is for God. If we believe that all of life is worship, if we believe that every area of life is an area where we take time take up our cross and follow Jesus, that that includes marriage, that we say marriage is for the Lord. And when we pursue the Lord's design, we find, surprise, it leads to our good and our flourishing, right?
But that North Star of marriage is like every area of life, an act of worship.
37 · The pastor applies the theological claim by addressing the congregation's expectations of marriage
It removes the burdens that we were never meant to bear. Listen, Your spouse cannot bear the weight of them completing you.
Marriage is a gift, but marriage is not completeness. Relationship with God is completeness.
38 · The pastor uses Jesus' singleness as a counter-example to the 'you complete me' myth
Remember who is talking here, Jesus, the perfect man, the most human man, the most human being to ever live, the person who most fully lived out God's design. He never physically married, and yet he's displaying the glory of God through his design for humanity, right? That, that God is who completes us, and these areas of life are areas in which to worship God.
39 · The pastor articulates the harmony between God's glory and human flourishing: pursuing God's glory in marriage is the path to our own good
Now, again, what we find though in God's glory and God's design is that God has tied his glory to our good. So the more that we pursue God's glory in marriage, the more we actually find ourselves pursuing our own good in marriage. Do you see the glory of God's design here?
40 · The pastor contrasts two hypothetical marriages: one where both spouses compete to extract completeness (doesn't work) and one where both lean in to serve the other for God's glory (does work)
When you have a husband and wife, if you have a husband and wife saying, okay, I need you to complete me. So they're pushing and pulling the aspects of the relationship to complete themselves as individuals, that doesn't work.
But if you live out, as we'll talk about in a couple of weeks, Ephesians 5, where husbands are to exercise love in sacrificing, in loving their wives, as Christ loved the church, they're leaning all the way in saying, I want your good for the glory of God. And the wife is saying, man, where do you need help? Where do you need strength? How can I bring strength to the areas you lack it? They're leaning in saying, I want to live out this design for your good, for the glory of God.
When you have two people leaning in that way, that works. Because you're not fighting to get what you want out of marriage, you're both pursuing the Lord and flourishing and growing. God's design. You see the beauty of this? God is so wise in what he has made.
41 · The pastor transitions to a rapid-fire listing of implications, warning that what seems obvious biblically is controversial culturally
Now, I just want to list a couple implications that we're going to unpack over the next couple of weeks, probably.
Here are a couple implications. First, this is going to seem— just a side note— this is going to seem incredibly obvious, but each of these is incredibly controversial.
42 · The pastor asserts that sexual union cannot be separated from the totality of marital union—sexuality is metaphor and actualization of complete one-flesh union in every area of life
First, marriage is God's design for romantic and sexual relationship. The one flesh sexual relationship cannot be sliced out of God's design for marriage. If you look, I mean, Theresa, we really need the kids ministry back right now. Can you take the kids for just like 5 minutes? I'm just kidding, that's a terrible idea. I'm just going to read the Bible again rather than trying to explain this. The two— this is in the Bible. Don't throw— don't yell at me, parents.
This is here. The two shall become one flesh. So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Jesus says it two times. Okay.
Uh, what he's saying is that the physical union of the husband and wife is in a sense, a metaphor for the complete and total union of the husband and wife in every area of life. You see that here where the husband is leaving his financial relationship with his parents, probably where he lives with his parents, his other relationships in terms of affection and emotion and all that stuff, all that is getting reworked and changed. And the entire trajectory of his relationship is toward his wife for the two to become one. And so what happens is, if you think of it like this way, if you think of a bridge, right? Where if you take a chunk of a bridge out, that bridge collapses.
So you cannot slice sexuality or even emotion out of the bridge, leaving, you know, I wanna do this, but I don't wanna do commitment lifelong, and I don't wanna do being financially tied together, and I don't even wanna do a ton of emotion. I think I'm in for the sexuality part and the fun part. Can we do that? You can't build a bridge out of that. It does not work.
And so, God's design is that this is the way human beings flourish, scripturally, for God's glory and our good.
43 · The pastor asserts that divorce is not God's design while acknowledging that Scripture permits it in certain grave circumstances (sexual immorality, abandonment, abuse)
Second, divorce is not God's design. As we'll talk about next week, divorce is a reality in our fallen world, but let's begin with divorce not being God's design. Now, there are very weighty, reasons that someone can be divorced and some specific scriptural reasons that you can biblically be divorced. You don't have to be divorced, but that it is allowable.
And that includes sexual immorality. I think that includes abandonment of a marriage, includes abuse, I think, as we'll talk about next week.
44 · The pastor cites a Women's Health article listing the most common reasons for divorce (communication, falling out of love, financial problems, etc
But in a recent article of Women's Health, As I often will read articles in Women's Health, a recent article in Women's Health was a divorce lawyer and a marital counselor listing the most common reasons couples get divorced. These are the majority, these are the reasons they listed, okay? Communication problems, falling out of love, no intimacy or physical affection, changes in priorities, not being ready for marriage when you get marriage, That's everybody.
Think of lack of emotional support, just feeling done, financial problems, losing a sense of self, right? These are the most common reasons that they saw.
45 · The pastor affirms that the common reasons for divorce are significant and require intervention, but argues that the solution is returning to God's design, not abandoning it
Now, are these significant? Yes. Should these be addressed?
Yes. Do these require intervention and help? Yes. But here's what I want to say from this passage. God's The solution to those problems is not throwing away his design, it is first asking, "What are we doing wrong?" Right?
If things aren't working, it's because we're not living out God's design for this. And so we'll talk more about that next week.
46 · The pastor directly addresses singles, dismantling the cultural fairy tale that marriage will complete them
And 3, I just want to encourage our singles here with this: getting married does not do what our culture of singles believes it will.
Marriage is not designed to complete you, brother or sister. This is the fairy tale in our culture, that if you just find the one, if you can just find the relationship, then you will finally be happy and whole and complete, right? You imagine this life, right? And for those of us married behind the curtain, we're like, uh-uh, nope, right? As we're going through that list, talk to the couples in this room, we're like, yep, Yep, yep, all the reasons for divorce.
Communication problems, yep. Financial, yep, yep, yep, yep. Oh, I don't have that one, that's good. Right? And— right?
Marriage is not designed to complete you. Relationship with God is the only thing that can complete you. Marriage can be a way for you to glorify God, and we'll talk about whether you should get married or not get married or pursue marriage or not pursue marriage next week. But just for today, hear me say that. You are not a second-class person or Christian because you're not married.
And I think it's unhelpful and unfortunate when at times the church broadly makes singles feel as though, "Oh, you're the other." You're like, "Oh, you're not married yet. We're going to have some couples over, but not you. You're single." Right? And that should not be the case in the family of God. Okay?
47 · A brief transition preparing to move into the sermon's redemptive-historical climax
And last, let me just say this.
This hints at where we're going in the series.
48 · The pastor expounds Mark 10:9 as Jesus' move to convict both the permissive and the moralistic by elevating the standard beyond anyone's reach
Verse 9, "Therefore God has joined together, let not man separate." What Jesus is doing is he is not only kind of convicting the people that have a very loose view of marriage, he's also convicting and calling out the people who have a very high standard of marriage. 'Cause they're like, "Well, but divorce is okay, right?" I got, you know, this, this, and this. And Jesus is saying, no, divorce is not God's design at all. In fact, what God's design is that you as a couple would be closer and closer and closer in every area of life until you die.
That's God's design. And everybody is meant to look at that and say, man, who can meet that standard, right? Who can be that heroic of a husband or heroic of a wife, right? Who can possibly hold marriage and sexuality reality completely pure, who can never sin in that area? Nobody can do that.
Nobody can do that, Jesus. And Jesus is saying, but that's God's design. That's the standard.
49 · The pastor traces a biblical-theological arc from the Pharisees' failure to meet God's standard to the story of the Bible: God commits to his people like a husband, they repeatedly separate from him, and yet he pursues them
And what he's doing is he's making the Pharisees see even they, with all their law keeping and self-righteousness, even they don't meet God's standard. And that is why we need Jesus.
'Cause you think, okay, who does this? What God has joined together, let not man separate, right? Man separates all the time. We separate ourselves. People separate themselves from us.
The story of the Bible is encapsulated in this verse, right? God committing himself to humanity, pictured in many places like Hosea as a husband that he commits to his bride, his people. And what do his people do? They separate themselves from him. They separate themselves from him and he pursues them and he goes after them and they separate themselves from him and they separate themselves from him again and again and again it happens.
And you think, what's the solution, right? How can they ever be reconciled? 'Cause it doesn't seem like God is gonna break his commitment to them, but it doesn't seem like things can ever change. And that is why we get Jesus.
50 · The pastor presents Jesus as the bridegroom who pursues his adulterous bride to the cross, meeting the standard we cannot meet
Jesus comes as the bridegroom of Hosea, after his fallen adulterous wife.
He pursues her to the end of the earth. He lays down his life for her completely in every way so that what God has committed to will not be torn apart. This is who Jesus is. This— and here's what I want you to hear, Christian— this is who Jesus is for you. You cannot listen to Jesus' teaching about marriage without in some area of your life saying, yeah, I didn't do that.
Right? Maybe you've been divorced and you're just coming up, man, I didn't do that, I didn't do that. Maybe you're single and you've sinned and fallen in terms of purity. Maybe you're struggling in your marriage and God's bringing to mind these areas of, man, I've been distant, I've been separated, I've pushed this person away. Each one of us, hear me, brothers and sisters, each one of us has some area or more areas in our lives in which we've fallen short of God's design.
But here is the good news: Jesus is the one speaking this. Jesus lays out the standard knowing that we can't meet it because he will meet it for us. Because of what he has done, 1 Corinthians can be written to a group of sexual sinners, and Paul can lay out the fact that they are washed, that they are justified, that they are cleansed, and that they will be glorified in Christ. Right? The solution when it comes to our brokenness in the area of marriage is not that we try to do better, not that we try to be as righteous as the Pharisees, but that we say, "Man, we really need help." And that starts with seeing our need for Jesus.
51 · The pastor directly addresses those for whom the sermon has reopened wounds, assuring them that the point is not condemnation but encouragement to look to Jesus, who has never failed in his commitment to them
So let me hear— so let me encourage you with this. If this is not a topic that's just like, "Oh, this is grating on me. This is like a scab that's getting reopened." The Lord doesn't want you to leave condemned. The Lord wants you to look to him as the only one who's perfect in marriage, who's never wavered in his commitment to his bride, and that includes you.
52 · The pastor transitions from sermon to corporate worship, calling the congregation to rejoice and confess in response to the gospel
So let's stand and I want us to rejoice over that and confess that as we end.
53 · The pastor closes in prayer, thanking God for his covenant-keeping pursuit of his people even to the cross, and asking that they would reflect God's love in their relationships
Let's pray. Father, we are so grateful that you that when you joined yourself to us, you would not let humanity, let your people separate yourself, separate themselves fully from you. Even at times in our own lives where we've tried to push away from you, tried to separate ourselves from you, you have continued to be joined to us and pursue us even to death on a cross. And so, Lord, I pray as we sing, we will rejoice in your grace. We would rejoice in your peace and we would, in light of that, in light of seeing how you've loved us, live that love out in all of our relationships, marital and otherwise, as an image, as a reflection of the way you love us.
In your name we pray, amen.