TEXT: Luke 16:18

SUBJECT: Luke #61: Divorce

Ron Hunt is a retired pastor living in Pine Bluff, Arkansas. For forty years he served a big church in San Francisco and when he resigned for reasons of age and health, he was the most admired and loved man in his denomination.

Dr. Hunt was everything you’d want in a pastor: a man of God, devoted to prayer, a fine preacher, and a first-rate manager of church life. But of all his good qualities, the one his people respected most was his counseling. Over the years many hundreds of people came to him for help and not one of them went away disappointed. He had an uncanny knack for saying the right thing at the right time and in the right way.

Though the dear man has retired from the pastorate, he has not forgotten his old friends. Nearly every day someone calls to catch up with him, and often, to get his advice on matters of doctrine and living for Christ.

One day, he got three calls from his former members and every one of them had the same question. At nine o’clock in the morning, Tito Fuentes called from Miami to ask Mr. Hunt if he should leave his church. The pastor told him to leave right now and don’t look back. At two in the afternoon, Robby Thompson called from Chicago asking about the same thing. He was told to not leave his church and that if he did, he would be in sin and his old pastor would be ashamed of him! At bedtime, the phone rang again and this time it was Jeff Kent calling from San Jose. "Should I leave the church?" he wanted to know. He was told that he should pray about it, talk to his wife and kids about it, and then do what he thinks is best.

What do you think Ron Hunt’s advice? He has three different answers for one single question. Do you think he has becoming senile? Or, maybe, that he has gone soft with old age and is now telling people what they want to hear? Or, maybe he no longer cares and just tells people the first thing that comes to mind?

What do you think of the man’s advice? I think he hit the nail on the head every time. For, even though all three men had the same question, the circumstances behind each were very different.

Tito Fuentes was thinking of leaving his church because the pastor was now teaching Jesus Christ is not God! Robby Thompson wanted to leave his church because they changed the wallpaper—and he hates yellow! Jeff Kent was unsure about what to do because he moved fifty miles away thought maybe he should find a church closer to home.

In this way, one question can be answered in three very different ways without any contradiction.

Believe it or not, this brings me to the Bible’s teaching on Divorce. If you read Luke 16 and Mark 10, you’ll see the Lord outlawing all divorce. If you read Matthew 19, you’ll see Him allowing divorce in the event of fornication. If you read I Corinthians 7, you’ll find Him also permitting it in the case of an unbelieving spouse forsaking the believer.

At first glance, the three teachings seem to contradict each other. We all want a yes or no answer, but the Bible doesn’t give us what we want. What it gives us is what we need.

What do we do with the three separate teachings? I’m sorry to say that the most common approach is to take the one you like best and make the others agree with it. If you’re on the conservative side, you make the more liberal verses fit your system. The same is true if you’re on the other side—the stricter verses are explained away.

This is the easy way to do it, but it is not the right way. All three teachings are in the Bible and we cannot play down any of them in favor of the ones we like better.

So, what do we do? If the Bible does not contradict itself, we have to assume that each passage speaks to a different audience or circumstance. In this way, we can do justice to every Scripture without doing violence to any. We don’t have to pretend verses aren’t there or put an unnatural meaning on any of them.

This is what I hope to do today—not to expound the whole Bible on marriage, divorce, and remarriage, but to explain what this passage meant to the first men who heard it—and to us too. Pray for me and God give us all the wisdom we all so sorely lack!

Who is the Lord speaking to in Luke 16:18? The verse itself does not say, so we have to go back and find His audience. That’s not always easy to do, but it is here: vv.14-15 tell us that He is speaking to The Pharisees.

What kind of men were the Pharisees? Were they humble and godly men who longed to know the Lord’s will for their marriages—and to do it?

No. In fact, the Pharisees were thoroughly wicked men with a thin layer of religion on top. Luke says they were lovers of money and proud hypocrites. Other passages underline their cruelty, injustice, and shallowness (putting things like washing hands above the weightier matters of the Law).

If a shallow man was a proud hypocrite who loved money and didn’t care at all about mercy or justice, what kind of husband do you think he’d be? And—more to the point—on what grounds would he divorce his wife?

Let’s go through each trait and try to come up with the answers.

If a man loves money, he might divorce his wife because she spends too much of it. Or, at a time when brides came with dowries (often big ones, especially if she was old or ugly) he might get rid of his wife to have the other woman’s money. Today, this is more common with good-looking women who leave their husbands for men who have more to offer.

If a man is proud, he might leave his wife because she doesn’t do everything he says when he says it. Wives ought to obey their husbands, but men should not be tyrants in the home or look down on their wives because they’re not mousy enough for them. A proud man might also divorce his wife because why should a smart, good-looking successful man (like myself) be with an airhead or an old hag?

If a man is cruel he throws his wife over for a younger, prettier woman. The fact that she got older and less attractive bearing and nursing and staying up all night with his children does not matter to him. A champion of a man deserves a Trophy Wife. Or, maybe the man treats his wife reasonably well, but he’s mean to the kids—either beating them, yelling at them all the time, ignoring them, or being sarcastic.

If a man is phony, he quits his wife because she has seen through him! Others kiss the ground he walks on, but she knows the real man—warts and all!

If a man is shallow, he divorces his wife simply because he’s bored with her. Or, he hopes to recapture his youth by chasing a girl half his age.

These are the kind of people our Lord is speaking to in today’s passage. They are not godly men heartbroken over wives who have one affair after another. They are not dear sisters left ten years ago by an unbelieving husband.

They are bad men who are looking for a way out of their marriages. They should be wining and dining their wives; loving and romancing them; being kind and patient and tender; shutting their mouths and opening their ears. But they’ve got no time for godliness! They’re too busy looking for loopholes in the Bible and trying to justify their selfish ways!

The Lord is talking to this kind of man! To this kind of woman. Not the disciple who wants to work things out at home, but the one who wants to break things up.

What does Jesus Christ say to such men? He says he "commits adultery". What that man calls justice, the Lord calls infidelity!

Under some circumstances, divorce is lawful. But many divorces today (including many Christian ones) are nothing but legalized adultery.

How often have you heard people excuse their divorces and remarriages with things like these?

• We stopped loving each other.

• We grew apart.

• We were fighting all the time.

• It was best for the kids.

• The thrill is gone!

Lawyers and judges call these things incompatibility. Jesus Christ has another name for them: adultery.

The man who puts his wife away for such trifling reasons has committed adultery—even if he’s not touched another woman. For at the heart of adultery it is not sex but breaking your vows. You ought to stay with your husband or wife—not because she’s prettier than she used to be or because he’s the kind of man you thought he would be, but simply because you made a promise. And God heard your promise. And He holds you to it.

This means—unless your spouse is an impenitent adulterer or is an unbeliever who has left you without any real hope of getting back together—you ought to stay in your marriage. Even if it hurts you! Even if you’re bored. Even if she’s not what you thought she would be. Even if he’s a lazy bum who ignores you. Even if you fight all the time. Even if you don’t love each other any more.

Rotten marriages are worth saving! But you don’t save them by looking for a way out! In fact, nothing makes a marriage worse than looking for a way out of it!

If your marriage is in shambles, work on it yourself! Before you ask your husband or wife to do his or her part, you do your part. You’re fighting because your husband is lazy. He needs to repent of his laziness. But, in the meantime, you get off his back and pray for him.

In another connection, the Bible says, "As much as lies within you, live peaceably with all men". Some men cannot be lived with in peace. But before you decide your husband is that kind of man, do what you can to make for a peaceful marriage.

Thankfully, many marriages are happy. But a happy marriage can be lost. Selfishness is the main culprit. Both husbands and wives are equally liable to it. Thus, both have to watch and pray against it…

…Do you want your spouse to become unhappy with you? Do you want him or her to start thinking divorce or looking for other possibilities? If you don’t, work hard at serving your husband or wife instead of demanding service. Oprah would drop dead if she heard this, but: Your needs don’t matter! Jesus Christ had needs, but He laid them aside and put the interests of others above His own. That's why He such a good husband to the Church—because He thinks of Her before Himself.

Do you want a happy marriage till death do you part? Follow the Lord’s example.

If my exposition is right, it means we have to do a lot of re-thinking when it comes to marriage and divorce. Some Christians are holier than God! They forbid every divorce, when He doesn’t. I know that’s not what they intend to do, but, still, they do it. Their goal is good, but making up Laws that are not in the Bible is not the way to reach it.

But—more to the point—we have to be a lot stricter on marriage and divorce than most people are. Ours is an adulterous generation where marriage vows are taken way, way too lightly! In talking to others about it, we shouldn’t be ugly self-righteous Pharisees, of course, but neither should we be conformed to the world—saying whatever the TV says.

Marriage is serious business. We should enter into with great care, stay in it with great patience, and only get out of it with great reluctance and only for a reason God says is just.

This means we ought to be tremendously grateful to God for the forgiveness of sins and for giving us a second chance—and many more too!

God forgives adulterers; He pardons lousy husbands and rotten wives! No Christian husband or wife can be ungrateful to Him! How many times have we done things that might end in divorce—or left things undone! Yet He has forgiven us and kept our families intact.

As for believers who are divorced and remarried? They are not second-class citizens of the Kingdom! God loves them as much as He does the best husbands and wives. And their past failures do not keep them from serving the Lord in the present.

Finally, this means we ought to be much in prayer for our marriages—for your own marriage and mine too. Pray for me and my wife; pray for other couples. The happiest marriage will founder without God’s blessing. And that often comes in answer to prayer.

Pray for couples who seem to be struggling and for those who don’t seem that way.

God make every couple a happy one. For Christ’s sake. Amen.