Thank you. Let's this time turn in our Bibles to Matthew and chapter 19, Matthew chapter 19. It was interesting to listen to the discussions that you've had, especially the feedback afterwards, because a lot of what you have said is more or less what I will be dealing with, but slightly from a different angle. You were largely concentrating on what I would call the symptoms, which is truth, the things people complain about and talk about. I want to handle things more from the diagnosis. In other words, going a little deeper than what is being said. What are the underlying causes? But even before we read Matthew chapter 19, the first ten verses, allow me to begin by just knocking us on the head slightly, because here is the greatest gift that God has given us as human beings other than salvation. It's the greatest gift. It's a treasure that he has given to us as human beings, that we can have such a relationship on Earth. From the way I was describing it earlier on, surely you would think that it's going to be your greatest asset on the planet. And yet, so many marriages are a real source of pain and misery. So many. As I said, out there in the world, I do a lot of counseling. And most of the people that I'm counseling may not even be churchgoers, by the way. But it's nine out of 10. When I get a phone call and someone says, well, look, you don't know me, but somebody gave me your phone number. I've got a problem. Can I come and see you? I even immediately pull out my manual on counseling marriages and just revise, because most likely, that's what it is going to be. And you say to yourself, Here is what ought to be a real joy, and yet it is a source of pain for so many people. The question is why? Well, the Lord Jesus Christ handled something of this when he was on earth. It was required for us, and here it is. Matthew chapter 19. Now when Jesus had finished these sayings, he went away from Galilee and entered the region of Judea beyond the Jordan. And large crowds followed him, and he healed them there. And Pharisees came up to him and tested him by asking, Is it lawful to divorce one's wife for any cause? He answered, have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female? And he said, therefore, a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. So they are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate. They said to him, why then did Moses command one to give a certificate of divorce and to send her away? He said to them, because, and this is where I really want us to spend most of our time, because of your hardness of heart, Moses allowed you to divorce your wives. But from the beginning, it was not so. And I said to you, whoever divorces his wife except for sexual immorality and marries another commits adultery." The disciples said to him, If such is the case of a man with his wife, it is better not to marry." The same surprise I have that the Lord is saying this is a permanent relationship. Instead of saying, hallelujah, praise the Lord, we've got a gift that's meant to last until we die, their reaction is, It's better not to marry. But it is a treasure, man. This is something you ought to be rejoicing in. And yet, here they are saying, no, in this case, I should not get married. Why is that? Well, at a very superficial level, One of the causes is the simple fact that we are coming into marriage as a left hand and a right hand. We are coming into marriage as male and female. Verse 4, have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female? That's already a problem. because we come in having been made differently. we come in having our biological separation already beginning to manifest. And there is no doubt that from what we're seeing earlier that that's actually the way God has made us so that we can fit into each other and consequently be complete. a lot of differences in the way males and females are created by God. An obvious example that I normally give is that men are stronger on the aspect of the part of our being, females are stronger on the aspect of the feelings. They are stronger there. And I'm not saying we are exclusively rational as men. We also have feelings. But the feelings tend to follow us behind. They follow the rational, the thinking. whereas females are made in such a way that the feeling aspect tends to be stronger and then the thinking tends to follow. And I joke about the fact that therefore if you're going to Talk about what curtains you're going to buy for your house. A man will simply ask, which shop sells curtains? And you tell him, you go in there, and the very first curtains, may I have one, two, you know? And he quickly brings them home. I've bought curtains. OK. Only to find that the wife is very upset about the kind of curtains you brought. It's the wrong color, wrong texture, wrong thing. But you said curtains, and I brought curtains. OK, because the man simply thinks, well, I need something that will cover the windows. That's what curtains are for. I've bought them, and so on. Even if they are black in color, it doesn't matter. They cover. Whereas you follow your wife to go and do some shopping in ShopRite. OK, already the men can testify. Because you're sort of picking, and she puts, and she picks, and she puts, and then she comes back to the first thing she had picked, and so on. And you're asking, OK, what on earth is transpiring here? OK, so you sort of have to keep speaking to yourself. I don't know what she's come to do here. She's not me. She's different, and so on. OK, so that's just a simple example. But the point is that it's a real difference. And it's a difference that usually takes long for a younger couple to adjust to. Because although you've said that you are male and female, and although you've gone through premarital counseling, it takes quite some experience for it to dawn. as a man that I have not married a man, and as a woman that I have not married a fellow woman. But that can be stretched then to worldview differences and also cultural differences. Because we are brought up in different homes altogether. We are brought up in different tribes altogether. We're brought up in different cultures altogether. And then we are coming together to have our legs tied to each other. Our perceptions, we did not realize how different they are until we are now in the same home. And all it is, for instance, is, an example I'm thinking about, is simply coming from different homes, just different homes. The homes you're coming from have developed an entire ecosystem. That is different one from the other. And every so often, you will hear the comment like, no, but this is not the way dad used to, mom used to, and things like that. This is not the way. We were doing things where I am coming from. And all that tends to color the discussions in the home sometimes. causing a lot of frustration. So it's not just male and female, it also includes where we are coming from. And at that point, I am saying that's at a superficial level. But I want us to go beyond God made them male and female. Because later on in our text, The Lord Jesus Christ is challenged with the question, why then did Moses command one to give a certificate of divorce and to send her away? And his answer is, because of your hardness of heart. That's the reason why, hardness of heart. And ultimately this is referring to the fact that we are born sinners. We are born sinners. What sin has done is to corrupt our morality, our moral choices. It's corrupted us on the inside. And as a result of that, There are a lot of consequences. Consequences in terms of my own dissatisfaction, but consequences especially in terms of our interpersonal relationships. And it's a fruit of Genesis chapter 3. So if we can quickly go there. Genesis and chapter 3. Genesis chapter 3. We won't read it from the beginning, but essentially what happened there is that the serpent through whom Satan was working tempted Eve. to eat the forbidden fruit, which she did eat. And she gave to her husband, who also ate. And immediately after that, there was a change. And the change was in their natural makeup. There was a change. and the change corrupted them. And what you notice first of all from the change was that whereas there was a wonderful relationship, vertical relationship between Adam and Eve and God, now when God comes in the cool of the eve of the day, we are told in verse 8, And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day. And the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden." So the very first effect is the relationship breakdown between these two people and God. He's coming in the cool of the day, in other words, a romantic time. and they ran away from him. But secondly, we also notice a discrepancy in the relationship between the man and his wife. Verse 11 says, God said to them, who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat? Now, the man's answer should have simply been yes. That's what we've done. We've eaten. We shouldn't have eaten. But look at his answer. The man said, the woman, the woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me, you know? It's clear that he's pushing the blame. Immediately, he's pushing the blame. Everything was OK, Lord. until you brought her into my life. She gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate." It's interesting that it's predictable. When dealing with a marriage crisis, there's hardly ever a situation where the complainant begins by saying, you know, shouldn't have done this. It's inevitably him or her. This person you are seeing sitting next to me, looking like an angel, is a real demon. Let me tell you what he has done or she has done. And when the person is explaining, it's a big mountain about this person and then, okay, they have to bring them in somehow because, you know, it takes two to fight. So when they come in now, it's, and then I sort of just pushed, pushed him, just a slight push. And then he sort of tumbled over and look at the way he's hurt himself in the back. So just a slight push. It's what sin has done. It's a broken relationship, even between us at a horizontal level. That's the disaster that we are talking about here. It's the same disaster that is there, really, between us outside the marriage relationship. I mean, think for a moment about the wars that take place in this world. Right now, we've got two major wars in Gaza and the other one in Ukraine. Just pause for a moment and ask, why? Are we coming up with all these rockets and drones and bombs and bringing down all this? Why? Why not just coexist? Why? It's sin, ultimately. It's the corruption in the heart. Now, the reason why I'm starting from there is that we actually don't have good people and bad people. What we have is bad people all around. So when you are sitting there and you are listening to the problems in the marriage, yes, you are dealing with the symptoms. But please remember that the root of that problem is not just in the complainant. It's rather in the person being complained about, it's also in the complainant, because we are all fallen creatures. And in that state of being fallen creatures, the evil one maximizes on it. He deliberately knows that we are like individuals whose clothes are drenched with petrol, and he's got matches. And he's very quick to light the matches and throw it there. He's very quick, because he knows we are terribly, deliberately wired in that direction. We are about to go into flame. Now, one of the major consequences of this is selfishness. Selfishness is one of the major causes. So when we listen to Adam here, Adam is basically being terribly selfish. It's, you know, God, can you sort this woman out? as though she forced his mouth open and rammed in that forbidden fruit. But no, she just gave it to him. He knew better than to accept it and eat it. But it's this chronic selfishness that is a fruit of sin. And that's the reason why Jesus says in Matthew and chapter 19 there that it is because of your hardness of heart. In other words, this incurable and stubborn state of the heart that Moses allowed you. He didn't say commanded you in this case. He says Moses allowed you to divorce your wives. In other words, This is not the way God intended marriage to be. In fact, he goes on to say something to that effect a little earlier. Let me quickly find it. Yeah, he says, because of your hardness of heart, Moses allowed you to divorce your wives. But from the beginning, it was not so. It's not meant to be part of the structure of marriage. Marriage is meant to be a blessed existence. But because of this nature of the human heart, we need to realize the consequence. Now let me say this before I go to Deuteronomy 24, where we'll be going, because that's where Jesus is quoting from right now. You see, our problem, our basic problem, and I'm not talking about the married couple having a problem, but the rest of us who are called in, is that we go in biased. We inevitably, for instance, if we are relatives, we go in with the view that our relative is the innocent party. a relative married a bad guy or a bad woman. So it's inevitably the other person that we see as bad and our own person as good. We need to recalibrate our thinking to a biblical worldview that all have sinned and all have fallen short of the glory of God. We are all sinners. It's two sinners that have been brought together in marriage. And therefore, we need to help two sinners to learn to live together. That's the key. We need to help these two sinners. Now, in Deuteronomy chapter 24, what we have is Moses speaking. We are not even told what the problem really is there in the text. We are not. So 24, verse 1 to verse 4. If you are there, 24, verse 1. When a man takes a wife and marries her, If then she finds no favor in his eyes. That's all that we are told there. We're not told what this lack of favor is. But clearly, he has found something wrong with her, because he has found some indecency in her. Again, we are not told what it is. And then we are told, and he writes her a certificate of divorce and puts it in her hand and sends her out of his house. So he has properly processed her out of the house. Moses here is not saying he should write her a certificate of divorce. No, no, no. He's simply acknowledging a process that is in place already. And he writes her certificate of divorce and puts it in her hand and sends her out of his house. And she departs out of his house. And if she goes and becomes another man's wife, and the latter man hates her, notice, She becomes a victim of yet another selfish man. And what does he do? He writes her a certificate of divorce. He puts it in her hand. He sends her out of his house. Or Moses now assumes another situation other than divorce. Or if the latter man dies, who took her to be his wife? OK, so now this is the main teaching that Moses is trying to give. This is now where he's saying this should happen or this shouldn't happen. And it is this. Then her former husband, that is the first husband, who sent her away, may not take her again to be his wife after she has been defiled. For that is an abomination before the Lord, and you shall not bring sin upon the land that the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance." Two things I want us to notice there very quickly before we move on. is the fact that Moses is not commanding them. Give us a certificate of divorce and send her away. Moses is not doing anything like that. He's acknowledging a process that is already there among God's people, the Israelites. He's acknowledging it. And it was a process that was meant to safeguard the woman. Because when you wrote the certificate of divorce, there were supposed to be at least two witnesses who were also supposed to append their signature to this document. And then you gave it to the woman. Notice in both cases, the statement, give it to her, is there. Because once she takes it, and then you escort her out of the house. Okay, so you're doing it. She hasn't left in a half. You've escorted her to the door. These people have seen it. And she leaves with that document. You can never go back there and start commanding her to come back into the house. Sorry. She's gone. She's a free woman away from you. So that was something that was already happening to protect the victim. But the second thing that I want us to notice here is the fact that Moses' concern is more to do with the remarriage aspect. That's his concern here. And the thing I wanted to notice is that in both cases, it's a product of selfishness. So the man, because of his hardness of heart, you've counseled, you've pleaded, you've done everything to try and keep this marriage together, and it's just She's going out. She's going out. Purely out of selfishness. Fine. Okay. She's gone out. And somebody else has married her. And the woman you brought in, you actually went from the frying pan into the fire. So now you've said, away. Where is it? It's selfishness that's making you do that. You're just thinking about yourself. And God is coming in and saying, sorry, you can't go on that way. whereby your own selfishness is making and breaking marriage and making and breaking marriage because it suits you. No! Your stubbornness made you do it once. Sorry. Your stubbornness is not going to benefit you this time around. It must not happen. If she's gotten married to somebody else, that's it. The bridge behind you has been shattered. So sin, made worse by Satan, makes us so selfish that we end up really making life difficult for other people. Sometimes, as I already heard from the many examples you're giving here, it's to do with issues like money. I make more money than he makes. Sometimes it's to do with childlessness. We were talking about that. I listened to one of the presentations, maybe two, You know, I must have a child, I must have a child as though it's part of the covenant. And therefore, this marriage must end so that I can find somebody else, so that I can have children. Notice it's all I, I, I, I. Me, me, me, me. It's all about you, and it is that selfishness that must be broken. Let's quickly go back to our text, Matthew chapter 19, because there's an aspect of that selfishness that we need to look at here, and the Lord brings us to it in verse 9. when he says, and I say to you, whoever divorces his wife, and then he adds, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery. In other words, it's this third party that comes into the marriage relationship that blows the covenant into splinters. And it's to do with the fact that one of the two parties, and sometimes it's both, but in this particular case, we're assuming a complainant is innocent. One of the two parties does not respect this covenant, that it's between two people, but becomes sexually immoral. does not recognize the fact that that's something that must never be. And of course, in our text, the assumption is that it is a way of life. So this is not somebody who falls into sexual sin and apologizes. And they, of course, are expected to forgive because the person is genuinely regretful. But this is sexual immorality. It is promiscuity. It is a way of life. You've talked and talked and talked and talked and talked, and finally you give up. But again, remember, it's a fruit of sin, the sin in the heart. It's not, no, this tribe, they tend never to be satisfied with one woman or one man. But this tribe, no. It's the sinful nature that produces this selfishness that makes a person overlook the fact that I am in this relationship. And then they go on in that way of life again and again and again. And that's where the Lord provides at least one very clear example where he is saying divorce may take place. So to the question, why do marriages end up in misery? or divorce? The biblical answer is sin, S-I-N. It's sin that causes marriages to go that way. We will have a lot of other reasons to talk about, but it's sin that finally does this. Even in the book of Malachi, where, let's quickly go to the last book of the Old Testament, where God says, I hate divorce, or at least in the King James Version and the New King James Version. In the ESV, it uses a slightly different phrase. But you can't miss this aspect of violence. Violence. Malachi chapter 2. And let's see. Let me begin from. What I want is in verse 16 going downwards, but I want to put the context. OK, let's begin from verse 13. And this second thing you do. You cover the Lord's altar with tears, with weeping and groaning because he no longer regards the offerings or accepts it with favor from your hand. In other words, God, who knows what is happening in your life, when you are coming and you are praying and you are pleading and so on, is just saying, shut up. I'm going to listen to you. And here's the reason why, verse 14. But you say, why does he not listen to us and to our tears? Because the Lord was witness between you and the wife of your youth, to whom you have been faithless, or better still, unfaithful. though she is your companion and your wife by covenant." There it is, not a mere contract, by covenant. Did he not make them one with a portion of the Spirit in their union? In other words, it's the Lord who brings you together. And what was the one God seeking? Godly offspring. Remember what we learned earlier. It is the context in which you are to nurture the next generation. Male and female playing your different roles, like a left and a right hand together, in order to bring up the next generation after the ways of the Lord. So he says, guard yourselves in your spirit. And let none of you be faithless to the wife of your youth or unfaithful to the wife of your youth. Notice where the problem is. Guard your heart. Guard yourselves in your spirit where sin takes a hold of you and drives you in the wrong direction. deal with the sin in the heart, says the God of Israel. Sorry, let me read that properly. Verse 16, for the man who does not love his wife but divorces her, says the Lord, the God of Israel, covers his garment with violence. There it is. He's not only being hard and ruthless to his wife, but he's tearing her away. from the life in which she has put her everything, says the Lord of Hosts. So guard yourselves in your spirit and do not be faithless, or as I keep saying, do not be unfaithful. So the point there again is it's all coming from this selfishness that is a product of And all of us need to be able to say, I have a fallen heart. And that's where the problem is. So you people had a lot of details about what causes misery in marriages and takes so many marriages to the divorce court. And as I said to you, you were quite right, because we're dealing with the symptoms. But we need to learn to recognize that there is something deeper, something deeper. And it is what sin has done to us as human beings, so that we are failing to handle the very treasure that God has given to us. because of our selfishness. It's the story of the dog that was crossing the pond with a T-bone steak in its mouth. I'm sure you've heard the story. And as it's crossing the stream, it looks into the water and sees another dog with a better bone. And immediately lets go of its bone to grab that one. And of course, it loses because that was simply a reflection of itself. The bone it was admiring was actually its own bone. That's what we do because of selfishness. We somehow admire other people and that other woman or that other man. We despise what we have. And in the end, we are the losers. We lose the treasure that God has given to us in which we ought to rejoice. So when we come into the last session a little later, we will be looking now at the solution, and you will notice the solution will be, what is it that addresses sin? Amen.