Don't Mess with God's Design

On your way to your seat, you should say hi to your neighbor or elbow them. . Elbow them rigorously, Vigorously, Rigor, vigor, Trying to decide which word's better for that. All I want to do right now is just like check, chat, GPT, to see which word is better: Rigorous or vigorous.

What do you think?

Jeremy? Rigorous, Who thinks rigorous? Who thinks vigorous? It's Buckeye.

I don't believe you And I'm from Arkansas, so don't believe me either.

I'm really excited about today. If you have your Bible. We're going to be in Matthew, chapter 19. We're finishing off our facts series, stepping next week into a marriage series- Yeah, Yeah, come on.

The great wedding banquet between us and the lamb marriage- Yeah, that is, that is ultimately what we're going to see.

But we're going to talk about relationships. It's going to be good for you singles. It's going to be good for you marrieds. It's going to be good for you anything in between.

You know A lot of people not married got all their kids and everything else.

The only thing missing is a certificate and the covenant. I'm starting strong today. Let's go Matthew, chapter 19, . I'm going to hit the word hard today because the word hits back hard and I, I appreciate in the first service I didn't feel good about it.

Afterwards A lot of people spoke to me and said it was really helpful for them.

But I want to tell you up front: sometimes we live our lives in a way that is different than what the word would, the, the Bible would tell us to, And my job is not to come up here and offer too much truth or too much grace. My job is to try to capture the ethos of our creator and deliver it to you. So sometimes I'm going to remind you of the grace that Jesus offered us on the cross. Other times I'm going to offer you the truth he gives us in his word, And both of those are difficult to accept.

Today is the final sermon in this series.

This is a difficult word to accept of truth. I was at a. I was in Montana this week. I don't know if anyone saw I had a free trip.

These free trips.

Man Should have become a lead pastor, church planter, a long time ago. They come with perks And so I got this free trip up to Montana. It was a place called The Refuge. Literally hang out with a bunch of pastors.

I was the youngest one I know.

It's so good to be somewhere. When I'm here, it's like these people are right in front of me And they're all young, And most of you that are like, fully grown, with your jobs and all that stuff. Now you're like 34, but you're still 4 years younger than me. I don't know what to do with that life, but at this, at this place, it was, it was.

I was the youngest, So I got to make jokes about old people, And when they were like "Yeah, you young whippersnappers" they looked at me.

It's so beautiful. Anyways, I, I got to jump off a cliff into cold water. I got to catch some trout fly fishing And then I got to have a lot of conversations with old sages. Now, they were just people a little bit older than me, Some 40, some 60.

Yeah, They don't like those types of lights in their 80s.

I really enjoyed getting to chat with them And I'm an external processor, If you know that. Say "Yeah". Yeah, Lauren and I get along cuz we're both external processors, And so I, I got to chat with these men about a lot of stuff, but I was prepping for this message this week and for my marriage series that I'm going to be bringing to you the next 4 weeks after this, And I was just asking them a bunch of questions because they should know better, And I got a butt, a bunch of different responses from people and what I felt. I'm just going to try to capture what I felt.

What I felt was: Oh my goodness, Even we as pastors are so deeply entrenched in our own culture and world that when we look at God's word, at best we approach it with some assumptions, that the word meant it for them but not for us, Or that there's a context that makes what we're dealing with now acceptable.

And I just want to tell you we've got to take God's word so seriously that when it hits us with truth, it's so heavy that it forces us to adjust. And- and I just want to say that at the beginning of this series, because I'm going to be as gracious as I possibly can, but I'm going to uplift the values that the word proclaims And it's going to feel to, to people in this room from all different demographics, like I'm coming at you And I want you to know I'm not coming at you, I'm trying to deliver something that hits all of us differently but equally intensely. And so we're going to be in Matthew 19 today. I'll go ahead and begin with my little illustration.

This is thing about eggs.

So when I was, Anyone have health class in college, . Or high school, Raise your hand if you had health class. Okay, I thought they made everybody do it. Explains our country Again.

It's gracious, Yeah.

So I remember when I was in health class, I, I, I grew up thinking like I don't know, eggs are part of breakfast. And then I remember hearing about yo- yolks being unhealthy. Anyone ever heard yolks are unhealthy? You didn't hear that.

Yeah, good on you.

So 1961, the American Heart Association put out some memorandums, or whatever they call those things, that yolks were unhealthy. They increased cholesterol cuz they had a lot of cholesterol in it, And so they kind of just made a blanket assumption that it impacted your blood cholesterol and car- caused heart issues. Because people would eat eggs for breakfast frequently and this study showed that, that could be causing some of our heart attacks. It went so far and it was kind of untouched until the early to mid '90s when there was a small study done that none of us ever heard about that kind of said: "Well, that's not true".

In the '60s, '70s and '80s they went from you can eat eggs to you shouldn't eat eggs except maybe once a week.

And then there were like restaurants that came out and they were like: "We're going to sell you egg white omelets and all this other stuff". I know some of them still do that. They're just trying to. They're just trying to catch you boomers who still believe that yolks are bad for you.

I'm kidding.

I'm kidding, But the '60s, '70s, '80s is boomer time. It's just the truth. And then the '90s, that study came out that said you could actually eat it a couple times a week and it would be fine. I actually heard a TikTok the other day where someone said: your best staple breakfast item is eggs- Synthesized protein that synthesizes more effectively than any other breakfast food.

And they flipped the pyramid.

Remember what was at the bottom of the food pyramid that we learned about in the '80s and '90s? At the bottom of it Bread. Right, It was grains and bread. Now we know better, don't we?

All you gluten intolerant people in the room?

No, the is. God made this egg with the yolk and the white and because of our own wisdom and study, we, we decided it was good to separate something. And now, after 30 years, we kind of realize probably wasn't good to separate it. And it's so funny cuz, when you separate it's really: Oh, getting a little yolk in there.

No, stop, Stop dripping on me.

Ah, I thought I was going to get the white out, but An egg has a yolk and a and a white and when you separate them, God, whites taste terrible. You got to put salt and pepper on those things. Speaking of cholesterol, I don't know if there's cholesterol, but that sodium can't be that helpful. Just keep putting.

It was so funny cuz there's anecdotal evidence that they didn't like.

They didn't expound the study, They just asked if people ate eggs. They didn't ask what else they were eating with it And what else. What do you eat with eggs? Almost every time, Bacon I'm.

There was no study done that said it was the bacon, but it's not a.

It's a hop, skip and a jump to realize that cholesterol probably increased by that bacon you've been eating with every egg. And it's so funny how we operate because we think we know better, than God in so many areas. This is, This isn't an innocuous one, right? It's just an egg, You can have your egg whites all you want If you eat yolks by themselves.

That's just weird.

But what? What I learned as I was studying is there are a lot of vitamins within the yolk. That if you don't get the yolk, then you're missing out on some of the benefits of an egg. If you only- Oh, that's so kind of you, I was just going to hang out with it.

One of the key was a little egg residue on my finger.

But when you separate them, you're missing out on what God put together in its fullness. And when you do separate, as you noticed, someone, I had someone come up here and do it, in the first service, and they did it like near perfect. Now, obviously there was still white on the yolk and yolk on the white, but they did a way better job than me. As you noticed, I wasn't very good at separating it.

It was just a whole bunch of yolk dripping on the white.

I'm going to stop saying that kind of stuff. It feels weird. Ah, it's on my Bible. It just gets everywhere.

When you try to separate things that God put together, doesn't?

It Gets on your kids And gets on your extended family And gets on your Bible And then you take it into your Bible and it affects the way you interpret the Bible. See, that was accidental, but it was pretty dope the way that worked out. My point is, Jesus makes a statement here in a second. He says: "What God put together, let no man separate".

I'm going to give you the context to it, But I want to help you understand something.

God ordained the covenant of marriage. He designed it And, just like the egg, it's really important that we don't mess with what God designed. That's my sermon title for today: Don't mess with God's design. And we've been jacking that thing up for years and years and years.

I've got way too much content to preach, today.

But I'm going to try to dial it in And we'll start by jumping right into the text: Matthew, chapter 19. We'll begin in verse three And then I'll give you a little bit of context. Some Pharisees came to Jesus to test him. They asked: "Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any and every reason".

You see, when you see that you're like "Okay, cool, Cool question from the Pharisees".

But that's a loaded question, Crazy loaded. So I got to give you a little bit of context. First off, I'm going to give you this thing called literary context. When you're reading the Bible, it's good to look before and after your passage to understand what happened before it, cuz, cuz.

That just helps you get a little bit more meaning from the passage you're reading.

So right before it is the end of chapter 18. The end of chapter 18 is where Jesus talked about forgiveness. I preached on this a few weeks ago. He says: Peter asked him: "How many times should I forgive my neighbor?

Seven times".

And then Jesus says to him: "70 * 70 times", Or 70 * 7, depending on the translation. So you've got to know when we're coming into this passage- as Matthew compiled it for us- that we're walking into He knows that you just read about forgiveness And then he brings this into the conversation. Now I don't even have to preach this passage. If I understand the literary context, How many times should I forgive my spouse?

70 * 70 times.

And a certificate of divorce is really a signed, sealed, delivered, governmental, backed unforgiveness. Now I know there are reasons and I want to be gracious to those reasons. I'll talk about those through today. So if you're one of those who has been in that position, don't get mad at me just yet.

I'm going to break that down in a few moments.

But that's the reality. If you understand forgiveness the way Jesus understands forgiveness- the Greek word there, aphiemi- literally breathing it out as normal, as you breathe out air, your marriages would look way different. If you know how to forgive, your marriage is going to be radically changed. So that's the literary context.

You've got a little bit of other context, Says: the Pharisees asked him a question: is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any and every reason?

Now they're pulling this from the book of Deuteronomy, but they're also pulling this from Jewish- I want to call it law, but to them it was a legal code. They're pulling it from rabbinic teachings that you don't have in your Bible. And there was one rabbinic teaching, taking that passage in Deuteronomy where Moses wrote up a certificate of divorce, and it interprets Moses as giving them a certificate for any and any and any and every reason. And then there was another school of thought.

The any and every reason.

Divorce was from this group of people called Hillel camp. The Hillel camp. There was another group of people, the Shammai camp. They were a little bit more conservative.

Many Pharisees were from the Shammai camp And in their conservatism they said that there was only one reason: divorce, and then subsequently remarriage would be permitted.

I'm just giving you the Scripture and the context to it. And it was in the case of, not adultery, but porneia is the Greek word. The Greek word for adultery is mo- mokia, mokia, and then the Greek word for what he? The Greek word here is porneia, which means any kind of sexual immorality.

Now don't just take that and run with it, cuz I'm preaching a whole message on this here today.

But they had an exception clause in the Shammai camp, the more conservative camp, that if there was cheating, adultery, any type of sexual immorality, then there was kind of a clause that since the marriage was already dead through that activity, then Moses would allow a certificate of divorce. These are the two camps in the first century Judaism. Two camps: Shammai, conservative, Hillel, liberal. Any and any, Any and every reason- That's a hard phrase to say Any and every reason- divorce.

So there's a little bit more context, A little more.

Can we go back to verse one for a second? It says this: "When Jesus had finished saying these things, he left Galilee and went into the region of Judea, to the other side of the Jordan". Now there was another person who did their entire life's ministry in Judea on the other side of the Jordan. It's a big, big name character in the Bible.

Anyone know who this person is: John the Baptist.

Now does anyone know how John the Baptist got killed? The method? He got his head cut off by a guy named Herod Antipas. He didn't literally do it, There was an executioner.

Herod Antipas was the leader of the churches in that area And if anyone wants to be a Bible scholar here and tell me why he got his head cut off, he got his head cut off because his cuz, he was talking mess about Herod Antipas divorcing his wife and marrying somebody else.

So the Pharisees go up to Jesus and ask him which camp- Hillel or Shammai- he's in, in the same region that John the Baptist got his head cut off for talking about the same issue. I don't know if you knew that. That's cool history right there. Literary context: forgiveness.

Cultural context: Hillel, Shammai.

More textual context, where John the Baptist was beheaded for a conservative view on divorce and remarriage. They're trying to trap Jesus And so when they ask him this, here's how he responds, And I love that Jesus never entertains the arguments of people who don't know what in the world they're talking about. He goes back to first principles. You can do that when you created the entirety of the universe, can't you?

He went back to Genesis, and here's what he says in verse 4.

"Haven't you read", he replied, "that at the beginning, the creator made them male and female and said, verse 5, for this reason, a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife and the two will become one flesh, So they are no longer two but one. Therefore, everybody say: therefore, We say in Scripture: if it's with it, says: therefore, it's there for a reason. They Who said that: I love it, Whoever said that: good job on you. You must know your Bible or scholarship, or you go to Bible college.

I don't know.

That's awesome, Love it. Therefore, what God has joined together, let no one separate". It's like the egg is still on my fingers. What God joined together, let no man separate.

He's talking about marriage.

Now. I don't know if you were married before justice of the peace. You were married by your best buddy who went and got an online ordination license. You were married by a Catholic priest, or you were married by someone like me a Protestant.

No, I'm not a priest or a father or any, I'm just a dude And I happen to have a ministry license that somebody gave me at some other church that no one really cares about.

But I've married a lot of people, right. I don't know who you were married by, But when you enter into that marital covenant, I don't even care about the legal standing of it- When you enter into that marital covenant, that is consummated. I'm just going to say it if your kids are in here, that's why we got kids church. It's consummated in the ancient world by sexual intercourse.

That is how marriage was sealed.

So some of you haven't been married, but you consummated a couple marriages already And I don't want you to feel bad about it. I just want you to know what the biblical definition of marriage is. That means it's a covenant before you, the other party and God. Regardless of how you did it, God sees it, He identifies it.

You're no longer two, but you're one flesh, And he says: "Let not man separate what God put together".

I know Verse 7, another question from the Pharisees: "Why then", they asked, "did Moses command that a man give his wife a certificate of divorce and send her away". Come on, Pharisees always jacking up the questions In Deuteronomy. Moses didn't command it, Moses wrote it up. Now Jesus is going to respond to this in a second, but I want to give you two things that I see in the text in Deuteronomy that will help you understand the Old Testament version of a certificate of divorce.

I think in our day and age we see a certificate of divorce as a as a way out to an extent.

But for the ancient world this was first protection for the other party, Protection for women, Because in the ancient world a man could just essentially throw their wife away, And when there's no certificate of divorce, there's no legal standing. And when there's no legal standing for it, then this woman is on her own, having no way to be restored or redeemed, to be remarried or put into a position where she could be successful and economically provided for. Like if you were alone in the ancient world as a woman, you were significantly disadvantaged. So when Moses writes up a certificate of divorce, to an extent he's doing this as a protection to the party, the woman, Cuz only men, for the most part, would step into divorces in the ancient world, And so it was protection.

Additionally, it required thought processing.

See, men could just throw their wives away in the ancient world, but the certificate of divorce required them to really think on whether this was the right thing to do. The time in between a decision and the actual divorce and certificate was pretty lengthy. And what it did was it? It took away the spontaneous method by which many people would divorce their spouses.

Now, the interpretation of the Hillel party was is radical.

I was reading some rabbinic teachings the other day, which you get to do if you're preaching messages and stuff. I was reading some rabbinic teachings the other day and the Hillel party, the liberal party, when it came to divorce and remarriage, they said they could divorce their spouse if they were bad at cooking. The literal phrase was burnt food. You think I'm kidding, Dude?

I'm going to tell you, if I could divorce my wife for burnt food, I wouldn't, but if I could, I'd have divorced her 20 times over at this point.

Hey, y'all it's funny, right, But when you look at the reason people get divorced in our country, it's pretty jacked up. Check a couple of these out: Couple reasons people get. People get divorced. One of them is they don't feel as committed.

We argue a lot.

These are the highest percentage ones. There is infidelity. We got married too young. We struggle with our finances.

Someone uses too many substances, and it's not always bad substances.

Video games is really high on the list. I'm just going to throw that one out there. Some say domestic violence. Some say they gaslight me too much.

Some say we grew apart.

Some say we lack family support. Some say I'm just not happy. I mean, I'm pretty unhappy when I got burnt food Right, That was the Hillel group. Then you have the Shammai group, who thought it was like the only way you could get remarried and have a certificate of divorce, as if there was infidelity involved of some sort.

And so they say: "Why then, did Moses command that a man give his wife a certificate of divorce and send her away".

Jesus actually answers something that's not necessarily in the Scriptures, but it's a really good. I mean, God can do that, can't he? Jesus can interpret it the way he wants to. Here's what he says: verse 8.

Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard, But it was not this way from the beginning.

Again, going back to first principles- He already talked about Genesis. He refers back to the beginning. Again, he says: "The reason that you even have a certificate of divorce is because you can't get your stuff together. The hardness of your hearts".

Again, the only way to forgive somebody- chapter 18, is to humble yourself and recognize that what they do I'm not going to let impact me, because I've got God, who loves me and called me and died for me and healed me and restored me.

He helped me Right. I can forgive somebody else because I have been forgiven myself- Chapter 19, . It's the hardness of my heart that ever made that made a certificate of divorce ever necessary. Jesus is going back to first principles.

He's not talking about exceptions here.

I know there's there's a clause right here that we're going to talk about in a second. But I've learned in learn listening to Jesus that pragmatically we've got to come up with very nuanced ways of approaching different moral situations these days. I was having a conversation yesterday with somebody about IVF. Right, I was having conversations about divorce, having conversations about so many different things.

Our culture has made it to where things are very complex and there are nuanced answers to this stuff.

It's not simple, But Jesus always brings it back to first principles. The certificate came because of the hardness of your hearts. But it wasn't always this way. In the beginning this wasn't the way it was And it's not the way it's supposed to be.

What Jesus is saying here is because of sin, things aren't the way they're supposed to be.

But because of his life, death and resurrection, things are moving back in that direction. He's He's uplifting a standard again. Now, this isn't for guilt, This isn't to make you feel bad if you have failed that standard. Goodness, I failed that standard.

The Greek word porneia, it's sexual immorality in general.

Everybody's been translating that verse wrong. Moicheia is adultery, Porneia includes adultery and just about any type of sexual sin. And I'm going to say something really carefully here, because I don't want anyone to go out there and get divorced. But looking at porn counts as porneia- Don't clap too hard- Adultery, infidelity, Jesus in Matthew, looking at a woman with lust.

Porneia is not all-inclusive.

It's sexual in nature, but there are a lot of things in this day and age that could fall under that. And we say as pastors: adultery, cuz. We're trying to find a practical way to keep the exceptions rare, But it wasn't always this way. There is a better way, A longer lasting way, The way that Jesus is promoting.

And as he continues, he says in verse 9, : "I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife- here's your exception clause- except for sexual immorality- and marries another woman, commits adultery".

There have been books written on that exception clause and I just need to tell you. When I was with these pastors- all of them almost- we just assume that exception is a reality and we go with it. I saw somebody post on their story say: "Hey, ask me questions". This was a pastor And they one person asked a question: "My husband cheated on me.

He's done it multiple times.

He's unrepentant. What do I do". Here's what the pastor responds. And it's hard to be nuanced on a story, and I know this person well enough to know that at the deeper level they would have been more nuanced- Can't be nuanced on a story.

Here's what they said: "It's a good reason to get a divorce".

Well, be careful, Because we just fall into the culture on accident. What Jesus says here is: anyone who gets remarried causes somebody else to commit adultery, unless it's for sexual immorality. And oh gosh, I wish I had time to go deeper into this study with you. But what I'm saying is Jesus isn't even focusing on the exception, But the first place we go when we're having struggles with our spouse.

Is this a good reason?

Is this a good reason? It's crazy because because I- I'm struggling here right One of the biggest questions I get on me, saying that divorce shouldn't really like, divorce really shouldn't be an option- My wife and I have decided that divorce shouldn't be an option, And shouldn't be is not a strong word. Divorce is not an option for us. Now you got to hold my feet to the fire if something crazy happens in my life and one of us starts to starts to act unbiblical, .

But at the same time, we believe right now in our marriage- and we've had some difficult times in our marriage- that divorce is not an option.

And, and you might say, "Well, what about adultery or sexual immorality". The way she and I talk to one another is we say, "Hey, we don't believe that's really an exception". Because we look at Hosea. God called Hosea to stay with Gomer, no matter how many times she cheated on him, And this was a portrait of God's love for us.

That said, even when we failed him, when we were immoral, when we played the harlot, is a biblical phrase- when we played the harlot against God.

He still loves us, no matter how much we do wrong. So if marriage is a portrait of Christ's love for the church, then how am I going to be showing that if I just get divorced because I found an exception that has to do with sexual immorality? Now, our viewpoint is that from the beginning it was supposed to be different, And I'm not going to let my heart be hard. I might have to thicken my skin up a little bit if she went crazy and did something like that, Or if I went crazy and did something like that.

But we say: "You know what?

No exceptions, We will reconcile, even if this occurs". There's something so liberating when you don't give yourself an out, no matter what It's like. "I'll stay married unless I don't want to get divorced, but". I'm telling you that if you don't start with that mentality, the likelihood of your marriage not working out goes much higher.

Let me be clear: One of the reasons I get from people is domestic abuse.

In fact, here at the church I've had no less than five to 10 people come up to me, mostly women, telling me that their husband abuses them. Now I've learned after the first three times to ask: what type of abuse are we talking about because it's gone anywhere from physical abuse- which is something that I really want to pay attention to in a moment- to essentially, they gaslight me too much, Or there's a pattern of them being mean to me. That's I'm My wife's mean to me, I'm mean to my wife And we're trying to grow closer to Christ And he helps with that. But mean is not abuse.

Physical abuse, though, that is something that, like you, you've got to protect yourself, You've got to protect your kids, And so there's a level.

We're not talking divorce here, We're talking safety here. So, when it comes to safety, I have- I don't like love to encourage it, but I have had to coach people to get into physical safety in their marriages. I don't- I don't even counsel divorce in that conversation. Hey, you got to get to a safe space, Go with your mom, Go, stay with your dad, Do what you got to do.

But you know the percentage that physical abuse actually makes up of divorces.

So few guys, It's so few. The vast majority of them, almost every single one of them, has to do with at least one of the reasons is we grew apart, And almost every single one of them is: I don't love them like I used to. I've turned into more of a roommate than I have this, and I deserve to be happy. Marriage isn't about your happiness.

Marriage is a portrait of Christ's love for the church, and your job in the marriage is to love your person like Christ.

Yes, if you're a woman, the husband should probably do that, but many of us got into relationships when we weren't even following Jesus. So now we're stuck in a covenant, bound together by our creator, that we're not supposed to exit out of, otherwise we're ripping apart one flesh. And you're looking at the, the church and the Bible, and you're like, "What do I do with this" is leave that option off the table And figure out: how do I love even if I'm not loved? How do I soften my heart toward the other person who's equally stuck in their own sin?

How do I, How do I develop so that I can be the person that God's called me to be?

To that person, In fact, happiness doesn't even come into the equation. I know the feeling. I know it. I know you married that person, you found that person.

You hope God sent them to you so that they could, like, make you happy or something.

I'm just here to tell you I am not capable of making my wife happy in the way that she desired when we first got married. I wish I was. I wish I was like Flynn Rider- or That's not a good one, Oh some Disney prince or whatever. He's not even a prince, he's a robber.

I'm more like Flynn Rider, I guess you know I.

I wish I could, And you know what She probably wishes- she could make me fully happy too. But due to my life of sin and struggle and her life of you know she's actually pretty good, but like struggle or whatever, like due to what she's experienced and I've experienced, when we come together, the job is not for me to seek happiness from them. They can't give me happiness, They can't give me peace. That surpasses understanding.

They can't guard my heart, They can't do any of this stuff.

It's only Christ Jesus. So the only way that this marriage works is if you soften your heart before them and before God and you choose: "I'm not going to bail, I'm going to stay". This is what Jesus is talking about. He says: "You had hardened hearts so you got a certificate of divorce".

And he says: "I tell you, anyone who divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality and marries another woman, commits adultery".

He is lifting it beyond the Shammai camp. He's taking it further. The Shammai camp would say: "If there's adultery they can remarry". But he's saying the Shammai, he, he's locating himself within the Shammai camp, not the Hillel camp, but he takes it further.

Watch this, verse 10.

The disciples said to them, or said to him: Now, this is: you've got to interpret the text with this, this portion right here. If you don't interpret it with this and you end at the exception, you're going to think: "Oh, he's just fitting himself within the Shammai camp, so that's the proper exception". Here's what he says. He says the disciples say: "If this is the situation between a husband and wife, it's better not to marry".

After what Jesus said, the disciples look at him and said: "What"?

Like no divorce? That's crazy, Jesus. Not like only sexual immorality of sorts. That's it.

We can't do it for any and every reason.

We can't do it cuz we're not happy. We can't do it because they weren't who we thought they were. We can't do it because they clipped their toenails differently than I would anticipate my spouse to do it. They don't cry pretty like I thought they would.

I mean they, they, they just turned into somebody different after they had a kid, Or they turned into somebody different after they got that job.

I can't do it for just any reason. I can't do it because I love them, but I'm not in love with them anymore. This is the disciples. To Jesus, He said: "Only sexual immorality".

And even then he had uplifted a greater principle: What God put together, let no one separate.

Not a judge, not a court, not your in-laws, not your parents, No one. Here's what he says to his disciples. You got to watch this, cuz it's it's pretty intense. I think people have been interpreting it like out of context quite often.

Jesus replied: "Not everyone can accept this word, but only those to whom it has been given".

It's so crazy. Jesus gets so intense here. I need you to understand this. For there are eunuchs.

Now, a eunuch is someone who's been emasculated, Like they can't have kids.

They've been like I don't know. I don't know what that movement is, but they're people. You know, when your dog gets fixed, That's eunuch. Okay, Your dog is now a eunuch, cuz you wanted to have a dog, Okay.

Here's what he says: "For there are eunuchs who were born that way.

There are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by others, And there are those who choose to live like eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. The one who can accept this should accept it". Now, a lot of scholars take that as kind of a transition of thought that says: "Oh yeah, by the way, it's good for some of you to stay unmarried". Paul says this in 1 Corinthians, chapter 7.

It's good for some of you to remain unmarried.

That's not a bad thing. And so that's how they interpret Jesus, to say: "Hey, a eunuch for the kingdom of God is good. Stay celibate". And that's how the Catholic Church took the priest mentality right.

But I think it's a little different.

I think this is, in the context of the marriage conversation, what Jesus is saying. Yeah, Not for everybody. If you can't take this teaching that says divorce is off the table, if you can't take this teaching that says let no man separate, then maybe you aren't the person fit for marriage. Be a eunuch, Isn't that crazy?

Just be a eunuch.

It's not for everybody. Not everybody can receive this. And to the singles in the room I'll say this: there was a beautiful thing that happened for me And I've heard it happen to so many other people. It was when I realized that searching for my spouse was not the route, But seeking him first.

The kingdom of God and his righteousness was the best route.

To add a spouse in. And. And I kept searching, and searching, and searching And I actually made the decision not to be a eunuch. That's crazy, .

But I made the decision that you know what, If God doesn't have a spouse for me, I'm just going to.

He's going to be my person, I'm going to follow him closely And I know America. So I was like I'm just going to go be a missionary in India or something like that. Maybe they'll accept it. Our culture has just ripped us a new one when it comes to a, a biblical ethic for marriage and singleness.

But singleness is truly a gift, cuz when you can focus all of your energy on God, it's a beautiful thing.

And to you singles, don't seek to be married. Paul says that: Seek the Lord and he'll provide for you in due time. That is the only place you want to be anyways. And it was when I made that decision that it was so interesting.

Like it.

Literally a week later I said: I'm going to be single. Then the next week, my friend Matt- I know a lot of Matts in the world. My friend Matt looks at me and says: you hang out with that Hannah girl a lot. I'm like, yeah, but I'm not attracted to her- no offense, sweetie, And.

And said you shouldn't overlook what's right in of you".

And I realized in that moment that all of my attractions through life had been created and built up through pornography, through chick flicks- I don't watch a lot of those- through other flicks, right, It had been built up through my parents who said "It's okay to look but not to touch". It had been built up through cheating in other relationships that I saw and I built up a distrust in anybody of the opposite sex. So I gave it to the Lord. I chose to be a spiritual eunuch, Just to be clear for everybody.

I got two kids And the next week Matt mentions that.

And then I'm at Books-A-Million looking at my. All of a sudden she was attractive And what I'll tell you, if you're single, is that that God will work things out as you seek him out. For those of you who are married, maybe you married someone you didn't know very well. God sees it as a covenant.

So take the options off the table and lean in, because the only way you're going to see the miraculous is if you stay in it.

When we first got out here, we just launched a church and I was dealing with a lot of different situations. People who were- we use the term cohabitating, meaning they've got, they're married, maybe they have kids and they've never been married- Sorry, they're unmarried, have kids and maybe have never made that marriage covenant. We had people who were just kind of you know, out there pornea-ing everywhere. You know it sounds weird.

Fornicating is the term.

We had people who had been divorced and they're pursuing a second marriage And, . And I want to tell you, if you've been divorced and remarried, like, praise God that he gave you an opportunity to do it the right way this time. Praise God, It's the redemptive work of Christ Jesus that enables you to now work out something that in the past didn't work out because of sin, whether it was yours or not. And I want to say to you- I'm not trashing anybody, I'm not speaking negatively of it, But we live in a culture where people look at those who've been married two, three, four times And at some point that person finally gets it and they get into a marriage and they say: "Man, I found the right person for me, .

It took a couple tries".

I heard someone say this in front of a group of people one time And I remember thinking man like: if you're in your marriage and you're struggling, I'll immediately try to figure out, . How to get out of it. If I keep hearing messaging like that. So if you're, if you've been remarried, I get it.

I totally understand that, and God is redeeming every aspect of your life.

But that doesn't mean that it was impossible for him to have done a work. And so I want to say to you who are still in your first marriage or still in a marriage that you're ready to get out of. God can do a work. We've experienced all these different types of scenarios, and there was one scenario where Hannah got texted, but I knew the person.

I'm try, I'm going to try to get this right.

It was really complex. They were married, They separated from this person And they were at the church And, they were just seeking the Lord Got into a relationship with a person, said they were Christian. Based on what was happening, I didn't know that that was the case. They had a kid in their first marriage And they got pregnant in this new relationship.

They reached out, said: "I'm going to equally yoke.

This person is not a believer like I thought they were. Do I marry this person or not". Yeah, your pastor has to deal with.

Yeah, it's craziness. And I'm sitting here and I'm just thinking and I had to go back to first principles Because it's like, if, if you're unequally yoked, why, why did you get? Why did you? You made a yoke.

You know what I'm saying?

Like it's just, yeah, it's only funny to them, but it- it's like unequally yoked, you already made kids, That's two yolks, or three yolks, or four yolks. And it's like we're always trying to get out of things, that that we increase complexity by the sin and then we ask harder questions and harder questions, and harder questions. You just got to go back to Genesis, And so I was sitting there in prayer. I'm like: "Oh, what to tell this person?

They've not been divorced from this person.

They're essentially married to this person, though there's not been a marriage certificate. What do I tell this person". I looked at this person and I said: "I-, neither". It's crazy, right, Like neither.

And they said: "Well, okay".

I said: "Maybe stay single and seek the Lord only". It's a hard word. Person's response is: "Well, but well, well, what about finding love". And I said: "Hey, like you tried that, It didn't work".

.

Yeah, this is a hard conversation to have, right, Like you tried, It didn't work. And so, the person like, really responded: well, broke it off with this person. They're not pregnant, well, not now, but they were pregnant at the time and they just sought Lord. Here's the crazy part: Somehow they reconnected with their husband, Reconciled, The husband accepted the new child.

What I want to tell you is, even in complexity- but that's crazy complex- You're just not happy right now, or you're struggling with something.

Even infidelity doesn't have anything on that situation, But God is a master at performing miracles. So, for those of you in this room, you think your marriage is on the rocks, You think it's at its end, You think you're struggling, You think you'll never get married. You think you're frustrated right now, or you think your kids are being exposed to things they shouldn't. What I'm here to tell you is, if you seek him, first, go back to the beginning, first principles, and understand that he is willing to do abundantly, exceedingly beyond anything you can ask, think or imagine.

He wants to work out a poiema in your marriage.

A good work, But the only way to get there is to do what Jesus says at the end: You have to choose him before. If you choose Christ before, he will keep you in things you would always bail on. You have to seek him first In any complexity. Seek him first With any exception.

Seek him first, Even if it's been a long time, even if it requires something difficult from you.

Seek him first. What I love about so many people in the Bible and so many people at this church is that I don't know where everyone's going to land or end up. But what I can promise you is this: When you seek the Lord, where you land is much better than when you don't. So many examples in Scripture I can think of, but I got to close this out.

I want you to know your marriage, . Not too far gone. You might be thinking, "Oh, yeah, let's clap, I like it". All right, Cassandra, Amen.

.

It's not too far gone. And even if it's complex, even if you are separated right now for good reason, if there's abuse, don't just hop into the next thing, Seek him.