5.10.2026 Divine Design Marriage and Divorce

Whether you get divorced or live a functional divorce, notice the divorce is not an unforgivable sin. And I think I need to say that in communities like ours, because we kind of look at it as, like, all of a sudden something's unforgivable. Divorce is never named as an unforgivable sin. There's only one unforgivable sin, blaspheming the Holy Spirit, saying to God, I don't need you, saying to God, I don't need your salvation. That's the unforgivable sin, because you don't want it. So divorce is not an unforgivable sin. [00:36:24] (29 seconds)  #DivorceNotUnforgivable

It's a serious one, because it breaks God's design, but it's not any greater than the grace of Jesus. And so I want you to know this. Maybe you come in and you've been divorced. Even in cases where it wasn't allowed in these two narrow allowances, know there's still room for grace. This is because Jesus, notice, he's our groom. He never fails to uphold his covenant to us, the church, his bride. Even when the church is faithless, even when you are faithless, even though he has every right to be done with us, he never divorces us. [00:36:53] (47 seconds)  #GraceGreaterThanDivorce

Even when we run away, even when we're the spiritually adulterous ones, he has every right to separate. He never does. So instead of demanding that we're condemned for our adultery and our unfaithfulness, he actually is condemned for us. At the cross, you can imagine this as a relationship. It's like God the Father saying to Jesus, go get your bride. God the Father is saying to Jesus, what needs to be done, you do it. Whatever needs to be paid, you pay it. [00:37:40] (40 seconds)  #JesusUpholdsTheCovenant

We believe in a gospel, a good news, that God has dealt with our sins finally on the cross. Jesus stayed on the cross for all the sins of humanity. He took all the punishment and shame, which includes all the sin and shame that we bring upon ourselves in our marriages, in breaking marriages. That grace extends to every single one of us, no matter the circumstance. He invites us to this grace through repentance and faith, naming sin as sin and turning away from it and saying, Jesus, you have made a way from me. [00:34:12] (43 seconds)  #CrossCoversOurMaritalSin

Marriage is not a contract set by traditional cultures. It's not a transaction. It's not just a mere emotional response of love or feelings. It is a God-designed covenant that creates new realities. Something we ought to be in awe of and careful with. Marriage is so important to God that if you notice the Bible's beginning and end, it starts with a marriage. Adam and Eve. It ends with a marriage. Christ and his bride, the church. [00:13:01] (38 seconds)  #MarriageIsGodsCovenant

It's not only a relational matter. It's not actually only a family matter. It's not a financial matter. You are actually tampering with a supernatural reality that God has created. If you notice, you could kind of put this passage in a math equation. Those of you who love math, you'll love this. The math of marriage is mysterious and strange. It's one person, a husband, plus one person, a wife, equals one. One plus one equals a one flesh newness. [00:11:19] (37 seconds)  #OnePlusOneEqualsOneFlesh

See, this is one of the things they got wrong. It was a permission, not a command. And the main reason, second, is hardness of heart. It was not because of the plan from the beginning. It was not so. Divorce was not part of God's joyful design. It's a sad concession to human sin. If Moses had not given a concession, a permission for divorce, there would have been worse ramifications for those marriages. [00:19:30] (30 seconds)  #DivorceWasPermissionNotPlan

If you're submitting to Christ, now if Christ is not your head, Christ is not your Lord, you won't be feeling these feelings because you'll just be feeling your feelings. But if Christ is head of your life, he's Lord of your life, first, even if you have those allowances of sexual immorality, abandonment, feel the weight of that decision. There's tremendous weight, even if you're holding that concession, because when you choose to separate, you are not only giving up on the ability to restore your marriage, you are saying, I don't know if God can actually do it. [00:32:25] (37 seconds)  #WeighTheWeightOfSeparation

A hard heart stops feeling the things of God. Stops hearing the voice of God. Stops responding to the grace of God. But if we're in Christ, we have experienced a heart transplant. And so even if our marriages experience the depth of sin that sexual immorality can cause, even if we experience abandonment from an unbelieving spouse, before we choose to walk in light of that concession, we ought to consider whether or not our soft hearts ought to forgive and reconcile. [00:26:18] (45 seconds)  #SoftHeartOverHardHeart

Second, even though that's the way you must feel in one hand, I think at the other hand, some of you who have experienced tremendous sin because of sexual immorality or abandonment, recognize that you have a God who takes into consideration the weight of that. He understands the weight of betrayal and pain. And so even though it was never God's design for your marriage, he nevertheless, because of human sin, has given allowances. And even in that, even if you choose that, notice that God never chooses to separate from you. [00:33:12] (40 seconds)  #GodUnderstandsBetrayal

But also at the same time recognize it's not going to comprehensively deal with all the different kinds of things that exist. That's why normally people ask the question, what about abuse? What if a spouse's life is actually at risk? And it's been wrongly, I think, encouraged, where a wife, usually a wife who's being abused, stays in that at the risk of her life because it's not sexual immorality. Well, there's nuance there, isn't there? [00:22:36] (28 seconds)  #AbuseRequiresNuance

But he lifts their eyes to go beyond that text to the first book of the Torah, the first book of our Bible, to ask a deeper question. What is marriage all about? How did God design it? And if he designed it, it means he also gets to define it. And so he brings them back to Genesis chapter one. He explains in the beginning, he made them male and female. Again, even Jesus right here in recognizing this again, going back to Genesis, is uplifting women in his time. [00:06:22] (34 seconds)  #ReturnToGenesisDesign

Maybe you, in a church of our size, there's maybe someone who this morning, it may be an active thought or maybe it's in the background where you're today questioning whether you should separate from your spouse. Or maybe it's happened in your life. Maybe rather than focusing on all the reasons you should or should not, that's saying that's missing all those reasons because that's part of the equation. Notice that in the question of divorce, Jesus redirects their eyes to design. That's what Jesus does. [00:14:46] (40 seconds)  #WrestlingWithSeparationQuestion

One thing we'll see in this text is that this sermon is not coming at you, but we'll see that Jesus is coming for you. Because all of us, when we experience sin and brokenness, we experience it in all kinds of ways. Some of us will experience it in mothering, in being children, in our marriages. And what we find again and again if we look at God's word is that we have a God who moves towards us and who is a faithful, loving parent. One that loves us more than we can ever know. [00:01:36] (36 seconds)  #JesusIsComingForYou

As I prayed and thought about this, as I shared with the elders, I literally asked them, like, should we change this passage? Because it just feels strange. But we decided maybe there is something gracious about God's timing, even though it doesn't seem to be something we would ever choose. Because Mother's Day, as we just prayed, holds a lot. Some of you are celebrating. Others are coming in with something you're carrying that's heavy. And some of you heard the word divorce, heard the passage read, and your stomach tightened a little bit because you may have lived through it. [00:00:57] (32 seconds)  #TrustGodsTiming

Jesus is on the road, literally and supernaturally and in a significant way towards Jerusalem, which is not a celebration in many ways. It is towards a cross. It is towards betrayal. It is towards suffering as he's predicted and explained to his disciples, them not truly understanding what all that means yet. The Pharisees, as we've seen throughout this gospel, are threatened by Jesus' popularity. They don't like how he's questioned them. He's not been the most kind in many ways because he's just being truthful about how they have turned their love for God into something that is really about them. [00:03:19] (39 seconds)  #JourneyToJerusalemAndCross

What do we receive? What's the imagery that's described in the Bible? We have a heart of stone that's transplanted with a heart of flesh. One that's soft, that can receive and feel God's work. One that can hear God's voice. One that can experience God's grace. Doctors describe a condition where the physical heart can literally harden. It can calcify. Protein deposits can actually be dropped into your heart and literally they call it like a stiff heart or hard heart syndrome. [00:25:31] (40 seconds)  #FromStonyToFleshyHeart

If you are the offended one, even if you have a cause for divorce that God would permit, the call to Christ is to wrestle with whether or not forgiveness is possible. And it's not an easy journey. I'm not saying that's something automatic. It's just like a simple, you just choose to do it because the depth of breaking that unique oneness from these sins is deep. But a soft heart in the call to submit to Christ must at least wrestle with that question and not immediately jump. [00:27:03] (30 seconds)  #OffendedWrestleWithForgiveness

They played our trump card. They insist. They forced the issue. Armed with Deuteronomy, they try and make Jesus seem to be anti-Bible. Right? Right? Don't you know Jesus, Deuteronomy? And Jesus exposes the errors. First he says, notice what they say, right? Verse 7, why then did Moses command? Notice verse 8, what Jesus says, it was because of your hardness of heart, Moses, allowed. [00:18:57] (32 seconds)  #PhariseesTriedToTrapJesus

That same God is inviting you today to him, to his open arms. This is for the divorced. This is for the remarried. This is for the ones who are just holding it together, barely. This is for the one who failed and knows it. Whatever your story is today, a marriage that is thriving, one that's struggling, one that's already ended, Jesus is not done with you. He made a way. He was put away so that you would never be. His arms are open. His covenant still stands and his grace is open to every single one here. [00:39:10] (40 seconds)  #JesusOpenArmsForEveryStory