#158 Hardest Test | Matthew 5:31-32

Welcome to Episode #158 of Way of the Bible podcast. This is our sixth of eight episodes in our Twentieth mini-series entitled, Sermon on the Mount. On today’s episode we’ll be hearing Jesus teach on what is today perhaps his hardest test to pass. Marriage is for life.

As with our last episode that addressed our primal urge bent toward abandonment of God in a heated quest for sex, drugs, rock and roll, this is a huge topic. And while Jesus covers this topic in only two verses, it is much larger than can be addressed in one episode. As with our primal urge bent on lusting the topic, of divorce follows hand in hand. We’ll just scratch the surface of this tidbit Jesus dropped into his sermon. 

We’re going to jump right into the quagmire and take our time climbing out. If you are one who has experienced divorce either by being from a child of a broken marriage or by going through a divorce yourself, hang in there as you will hear the reason why it is so difficult to reconcile in your life. Remember from the start, God has reconciled all things to himself in Jesus Christ.

So here we go. Matthew 5:31-32 – It was also said, ‘Whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce.’ 32 But I say to you that everyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of sexual immorality, makes her commit adultery, and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.

Before you turn off this episode, please hear what I read next and then you can turn it off. Part of our problem with Jesus when he says something we don’t like, don’t agree with, or flat out just makes us uncomfortable is we’re not recognizing who he really is. 

I purposely said “who he really IS” because Jesus is God, the Son of God, the eternal and ever existent “I AM that I AM” from which and through whom all things seen and unseen in heaven and on earth were created. God in the person of Jesus was incarnated in human form, lived a perfect life, died THE PERFECT DEATH, raised again to life on the 3d day, forty days later he ascended into heaven where he received the glory he had from before the world began, and upon sitting down at the right hand of the Father, God the Father sent His Holy Spirit to convict the world of sin, righteousness, and judgment, and to rescue those who would believe in Jesus; even in his name. That’s us and there is infinitely more.

I’m convinced we will spend eternity with Jesus and never fully comprehend what he and his Father did to redeem the many of mankind and to reconcile all things in heaven and on earth to himself. Key point here I don’t want you to miss. Please pinch yourself right now. Seriously, pinch yourself. Some of you are still hesitant, I get it. Did you know there are people so lost in the world, they purposefully cut themselves to prove they are alive and have feelings. If you’ve ever seen Fight-Club that’s the adult version of teenage cutters.

Point being, you are alive, you are living a life, you are listening to my voice on this podcast; at least if you’ve kept listening this long. You are human; surprise!! We’ve been here for at least six thousand years and many believe much longer. But six thousand plus will suffice to make my point. 

You didn’t create yourself. You have a mother and a father; whether you’re speaking to them or not; your parents had sexual relations, your mother carried you to term without a miscarriage or aborting you, and you’re still living. We have a tendency to think somehow, we just showed up around eight grade; fully formed wth hormones just starting to rage. 

It took twenty years from the 1960’s to the 1980’s to seep in, but by the mid-1980’s divorce was in full swing. Many of the obstacles to divorce had been lessened and latch key kids became a reality. Today, you don’t even need a reason to divorce, simply both sign a piece of paper an