Jesus Takes Us Back to the Beginning to the Future (Mat 19:1-9).Sunday July 27, 2025
Introduction:
Gen 1-11 covers the first third of human history (creation to Abraham). Within it are the origins of all the things that sustain the human race: freedom, marriage, family, and nations (governments).
Freedom, marriage, and family were established in the Garden of Eden. What has sin done to them?
What is the Lord Jesus going to do about the destruction of them due to sin? He is going to do the most incredible thing to give us the power over sin and the ability to exercise, in His love, freedom, marriage, family, and money as He would – He is going to give His life for us.
On His way to Jerusalem, Jesus and His group are interrupted several times in order to bring a spotlight on these issues.
Can we see what Jesus has accomplished so as to live in our marriages, families, churches, communities in His manner? Divine love.
The Lord does not create behavior modification but heart transformation.
Origins: Who? Why? How?
Mat 19:1-2 When Jesus had finished these words [stated after each major discourse], He departed from Galilee and came into the region of Judea beyond the Jordan; 2 and large crowds followed Him, and He healed them there.
Jesus’ teaching on marriage, family, and money is set under the framework of healing.
Test on divorce:
Mat 19:3 Some Pharisees came to Jesus, testing Him and asking, "Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any reason at all?"
Mat 19:7 hey said to Him, "Why then did Moses command to give her a certificate of divorce and send her away?"
Mar 10:3 “What did Moses command you?” Reference to the Law. Not Moses’ own ideas.
Did Moses command them? No. It was a permission.
They are going to reference: Deu 24:1-4 “When a man takes a wife and marries her, and it happens that she finds no favor in his eyes because he has found some indecency in her, and he writes her a certificate of divorce and puts it in her hand and sends her out from his house, 2 and she leaves his house and goes and becomes another man's wife, 3 and if the latter husband turns against her and writes her a certificate of divorce and puts it in her hand and sends her out of his house, or if the latter husband dies who took her to be his wife, 4 then her former husband who sent her away is not allowed to take her again to be his wife, since she has been defiled; for that is an abomination before the Lord, and you shall not bring sin on the land which the Lord your God gives you as an inheritance.”
Deu 24:1-4 is not an origin but a permissive law for those having already broken their marriage. It is not a command.
Back before Moses (the Law) to origins:
Mat 19:4-5 And He answered and said, "Have you not read, that He who created them from the beginning made them male and female, 5 and said, 'For this cause a man shall leave his father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife; and the two shall become one flesh'?
Gen 1:27; 2:24.
The Pharisees talk about Moses’ Law about divorce, but that is a response by God for the sinfulness of man – not origins by God.
The Pharisees did not want to know God, or in this case, why God made marriage and as such how to submit to that.
The God who first made humanity male and female also laid it down that those two sexes should come together in an indissoluble union of “one flesh.”
“cleave” – kollao = glue or cement together.
“become one flesh” = ontological – a being.
It can also be assumed that it is the sexual union that makes the two people one flesh in a permanent union and not just the agreement or legal contract. Paul intimates this in 1Co 6:16 in which he also quotes Gen 2:24.
1Co 6:12-20 All things are lawful for me, but not all things are profitable. All things are lawful for me, but I will not be mastered by anything. 13 Food is for the stomach and the stomach is for food, but God will do away with both of them. Yet the body is not for immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord is for the body. 14 Now God has not only raised the Lord, but will also raise us up through His power. 15 Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take away the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? May it never be! 16 Or do you not know that the one who joins [kollao (passive)] himself to a prostitute is one body with her? For He says, "THE TWO SHALL BECOME ONE FLESH." 17 But the one who joins [kollao (passive)] himself to the Lord is one spirit with Him. 18 Flee immorality. Every other sin that a man commits is outside the body, but the immoral man sins against his own body. 19 Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own? 20 For you have been bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body.
Paul uses the same passage in Genesis to argue against sexual promiscuity.
God made them and joined them – no one separate them.
Mat 19:6 "So they are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate."
There is the answer to the divorce question – and this becomes the law of the church. You say impossible?
“Let no man separate” is present imperative – commandment. Moses did not command, the Lord who gave the Law, here does.
His argument is not expressed in terms of what cannot happen (it happens every day), but in terms of what must not happen.
God has joined them together.
God told Moses to permit them “after” their failure.
Mat 19:7-10 They said to Him, "Why then did Moses command to give her a certificate of divorce and send her away?" 8 He said to them, "Because of your hardness of heart, Moses permitted you to divorce your wives; but from the beginning it has not been this way. 9 "And I say to you, whoever divorces his wife, except for immorality, and marries another woman commits adultery." 10 The disciples said to Him, "If the relationship of the man with his wife is like this, it is better not to marry."
Application.
Marriage was designed for two perfect people. Jesus confirms what we already knew, that after the fall, marriage remained marriage. Now, however, 2 imperfect people. How did we do?
Gen 4:19 Lamech took to himself two wives:
Gen 4:24 If Cain is avenged sevenfold, Then Lamech seventy-sevenfold." [same phrase: 70 x 7]
How did Abraham do in marriage? Jacob? Surely the kings would do better. David? Solomon?
Surely, when Messiah comes He would restore all things. True, but can He force us to love and commit in loyalty and sacrifice in marriage and family, using all money to God’s glory?
Christ is going to make a new humanity and its debut will be 7 weeks after His resurrection.
40 things received at salvation (Chafer and Thieme influenced list); check them out on the web page from Grace Bible Church in Costa Mesa CA (Pastor Thomas Tyree). https://www.egracebiblechurch.org/forty.htm
I’ll just take a sampling of the 40 or so things.
All sin forgiven. Indwelt by the Trinity (power of HS). In union with Christ. Made complete. Free from the Mosaic Law. Elected to a son or daughter of God. Made a citizen of Heaven. Betrothed to Christ. Resurrected. Gifted with eternal life.
By faith have these become a reality in you? Or are they things you maybe heard, know of, etc. Are they ontological (a being) or nominal (just a list).
This is why Christ can demand that you and I go back to origins, God’s design, and live them.
A marriage where the two become glued and one flesh demands divine, virtue love. It demands the love of 1Co 13:4-8.
1Co 13:4-8 Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, 5 does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, 6 does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; 7 bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. 8 Love never fails
Marriage was not made for your happiness. It is an arena to share happiness and rejoice in another’s heart in divine love.
And they will love like Him. And when that love unites to another … Romance will not bring it to be, nor personal love, nor attraction, but divine power that is patient, kind, not jealous, doesn’t brag, is not arrogant, acts properly, is unselfish, does not get angry, forgives all, rejoices in the truth of things, bears all the other’s burdens, believes and hopes in the future, and endures everything right by your side.
Romance doesn’t hold a candle to that. And only God does that to any degree.
When your marriage looks like that, you both become a witness for the Lord in the world under the deception of Satan.
Jesus made the church able to be like Him. Like Him, like God, in love – He transformed your heart. Will you?
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