Sermon on the Mount (Part 7)

Well, let's go ahead and open our Bibles and turn to Matthew chapter 5. Matthew chapter 5, we'll be reading verses 31 through 37 this morning.

Matthew 5, verses 31 through 37. Let's begin with a word of prayer.

Heavenly Father, I thank you so much for this day. I pray that you would help us to rejoice in your truth and to hear what you have to say with eagerness that you, by your grace, would give us an amen in our hearts concerning this word that you have given to us from heaven.

We thank you that you love us and have shown the quality of your love by sending your son

Jesus Christ to be our Savior and our King. We thank you that you love us by your

Spirit whom you have given to us, who indwells us, by whom we know you as our

Abba Father. We ask this morning as we read your word that you would communicate to us by your

Spirit about your Son, that we may rejoice in your truth. We pray these things in Christ's name, amen.

Matthew 5, beginning in verse 31. Furthermore, it has been said, whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce.

But I say to you that whoever divorces his wife for any reason except sexual immorality causes her to commit adultery.

And whoever marries a woman who is divorced commits adultery.

Again, you have heard that it was said to those of old, you shall not swear falsely, but shall perform your oaths to the

Lord. But I say to you, do not swear at all, neither by heaven, for it is

God's throne, nor by the earth, for it is His footstool, nor by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great king.

Nor shall you swear by your head, because you cannot make one hair white or black.

But let your yes be yes, and your no, no. For whatever is more than these is from the evil one.

All right, so we've got two of these antitheses put together.

You have heard it said, but I say to you. And it's worth thinking about why we might look at these two together.

What seems to be a common denominator, a correlation between what

Jesus has to say about divorce and marriage, and what

He has to say about taking oaths and swearing? Do you have any ideas what the connection might be between those two antitheses?

Sure. Yeah. Yeah. So there's, we should be looking to ground our truthfulness in something other than these, what was for Jesus' day a cheap custom, you know.

But I think that when we look at the issue of marriage, of course we've got a wedding coming up soon.

But when we gather together for a wedding, we are there to give witness to vows being taken to God that a husband will be faithful to his wife, and a wife will be faithful to her husband.

They're saying, they're saying, I promise. So they're saying something, and they're going to live according to that word.

And so you can see how important it is that our yes be yes and our no, no, right?

Not just in the daily general sense, but also in the most important kind of human relationship that God designed, that of husband and wife.

So the first antithesis that we have, and again, remember the word antithesis is simply a label that has been given to this area of the

Sermon on the Mount called the antithesis, where you have Jesus saying, you have heard it said, but I say to you.

And as we've been very clear on the matter, Jesus is not wadding up the old and throwing it away, he's satisfyingly fulfilling what has been put down in Scripture thus far, and showing a supreme righteousness in himself.

So it's a antithesis of fulfillment, not of opposition, outright opposition.

Now Jesus is going to be opposed to the manner in which the

Scriptures were often interpreted by self -righteous hypocrites.

But we can say, we can identify that as opposition to false teaching, but not mix that with his treatment of the

Old Testament. It's not the exact same thing, so we have to read carefully. So what does he say about divorce?

Furthermore, it has been said, whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce, but I say to you that whoever divorces his wife for any reason except sexual immorality causes her to commit adultery, and whoever marries a woman who is divorced commits adultery.

So the old saying reduces divorce, and then by logical extension, reduces marriage to a legal consideration, just reduces it down to a legal consideration, that's it.

It's just a legal binding relationship of some kind, it's kind of a reduction.

But Jesus, in his new saying, keeps the sacredness of marriage central, the sacredness of the relationship central.

So look at the old saying, furthermore, it has been said, whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce.

Now this is an accurate summation of two things.

One is an accurate summation of Deuteronomy 24, verses 1 through 4, but it's also a summation of the current thinking in Jesus' day regarding divorce, which was not an accurate reflection of Deuteronomy 24, verses 1 through 4, and he's going to clarify all of that.

So let's go back to Deuteronomy chapter 24, verses 1 through 4.

We need to explore what Moses said there, and why he said it. The reason why we need to look at it for ourselves is because Moses makes a corrective measure here, introduces some case law for the sake of Israel in covenant with God, and why he introduces it is very important.

The teaching in Jesus' day gave little consideration to the original context of this passage, and so they found all manner of ways to abuse what

Moses said, while they themselves were saying, we're being faithful to Moses. So Deuteronomy 24, verse 1, 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 uncleanness in her, and he writes her a certificate of divorce, puts it in her hand, and sends her out of his house, when she has departed from his house, and goes and becomes another man's wife.

If the latter husband detests 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 as his wife, then her former husband who divorced her must not take her back to be his own wife after 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 is giving you as an inheritance."

Now, did you notice how many if -then qualifiers were a part of that string of instructions?

There's a lot of context within the Old Covenant that gives some meaning to this.

For example, they were given instructions as the

Lord's servant of judgment against the Canaanite tribes who had had centuries of witness from Abraham, Melchizedek, Isaac, Jacob, and so on, to repent and turn to the one true

God. After centuries of rejection of the truth,

God had ordained for judgment to sweep the entire land of Canaan, the tribes of Canaan, by the hand of His servant

Israel. He sends His people into the land to do what? To bring judgment on all the

Ites, the Canaanites, the Perizzites, all of the Ites, the

Hittites, and then the Enes, the Philistines, so on and so forth. So all the

Ites and the Enes are going to get judged by God's servant Israel, who was especially tasked for that role.

In the process of the sweeping judgment, sometimes a city like Jericho would be placed under the ban, and everything and everyone there was dedicated unto the

Lord for utter destruction. Remember, Achan took some for himself that only belonged to God, and therefore judgment fell upon Achan and his whole household.

In other cases, they were able to destroy a city, take over a region, and it was meant for plunder to them, including unmarried women who could be taken as a wife.

An unmarried woman of one of the Ites or the Enes could be taken by a Hebrew as a wife, and there was all manner of instructions about how that should go, including what happens if it doesn't work out and he decides to divorce her.

So when you start walking through the context that we have for this instruction in Deuteronomy 24, it's not simply what

Moses is saying about the string of if -thens, if all of this takes place, here's what's not allowed, but it's also in the context of Israel being

God's servant of judgment, to bring judgment and destruction upon the

Canaanite tribes, and what happens if a Hebrew man marries an Ite or an Ene and it doesn't work out and then he divorces her.

All these instructions apply. Yes, very specific, isn't it?

But what it was read, it was read kind of universal, okay? What the religious leaders of the day in Jesus' time fixated on was certificate of divorce.

Now, it's true Moses talked about a certificate of divorce twice in the text, and Moses does not say anything against that, so it seems to be part of Mosaic case law, therefore this is how we do it.

And there's some degree of wisdom to that. However, in Jesus' day there was a raging debate about what this meant, that he would find some uncleanness in her as the reasoning.

Why would a man divorce his wife? Because he found something unfitting or unclean, something that doesn't fit with her.

And there were two schools of thought. One was saying, well, it can mean any kind of indecency whatsoever.

It could mean anything from burning your food to not looking as attractive as you once did.

That was a very popular school of thought. The other school of thought said it has to be something extremely egregious and serious like adultery.

But in any case, the dissolving of the relationship was couched only in legal expression. All you have to do is write a certificate of divorce.

In Jewish culture, only the men could divorce their wives. In Hellenistic culture,

Greek culture, the larger Roman Empire, a man or a woman could divorce the other side. And it was a very common thing in Jesus' day.

Divorce was very common. The idea that was being floated, no matter what school of thought you ascribe to, was that as long as one followed the prescribed legal course of action according to Moses, then all was right and proper.

Now, there would be disagreement on what constituted an appropriate reason for divorce, but everybody could agree on the propriety of the process.

But the way that Jesus approaches it, he says it's not so simple or even legitimate to look at it that way.

The argument from the rabbis would be, how can we be blamed for following Moses, right?

But someone greater than Moses has come, and also a better reader of Moses than they were has also arrived.

So, verse 32, the news saying, but I say to you, whoever divorces his wife for any reason except sexual immorality causes her to commit adultery, and whoever marries a woman who is divorced commits adultery.

Now, we're going to take some time to be clear on what Jesus is saying, what he's not saying.

There's two ways to fall into the ditch on a verse like this. We can derive unwarranted condemnation, or we can so qualify and equivocate that there's no challenge in the verse left at all, and we drain the life out of it.

So, given the previous context dealing with lust where Jesus says, if you look at a woman to lust after her in your heart, you've already committed adultery with her in your heart.

And so, he's already on the theme of adultery, he's already on the theme of improper relations, and so now he's willing to teach about divorce.

Given that context, given the historical context in which Jesus lived, we remember the great controversy of Herod marrying his brother's wife, and the fact that John the

Baptist preached against that and got arrested and ultimately beheaded for his trouble. So, this is not a random topic, this is a hot topic of the day, and everyone was talking about it.

Now, Jesus is making a particular point here, and I want us to be clear on it.

Now, let's take it, we know what the Deuteronomy 24 passage was about. If a man divorces his wife and she goes away, married to another man, she can't come back to her first husband.

That was what was put in Deuteronomy 24. That was not the way that it was going to be run in the

Old Covenant. Now, what does Jesus have to say about the matter? He says that if a man divorces his wife for any reason other than sexual immorality, he is causing her – and we're going to talk about that word cause – to commit adultery.

And then He adds to that, whoever marries a woman who is divorced commits adultery. So, what is

Jesus saying? Let's think about it in practical terms.

Let's say a man divorces his wife, ascribing to the very lax interpretation of the matter in Jesus' day.

He says, okay, this woman is not as appealing as other women. I looked at this other woman, and let's say he doesn't think he's done anything wrong by lusting after her.

He says, well, I'm going to divorce my wife so that I can marry this woman. Maybe she's married, but I'll get her husband to divorce her, and then we can get married.

And once we've got two divorces after lusting in my heart for a long time, we'll get married, and I'm completely righteous.

The whole thing, right? He wouldn't have to offer a single sacrifice according to the current interpretation of things, right?

He'd be like, I'm clean, right? I'm still straining gnats and soloing camels, right? This is part of the problem.

This would be an issue. But if he does that whole thing, and he says, we've married, and so we've done everything properly, we've got all the certificates, you know, here it is, here's the certificates of the divorce, and now everything was done legitimately, many people would say in Jesus' day, they've done nothing unrighteous.

And Jesus is saying, no, that's completely wrong, that's adultery, that's sin, that's awful, don't do that, okay?

So, in that situation, you can see how clarifying it is. But we can break it down a little bit further.

Let's say that a man does not have any plans for another woman at all. He's just tired of being married.

He wants to, you know, arc with the new trend of males going, was it men going alone?

What's it? What now? Yeah, men going their own ways. I'm done,

I don't want to be married anymore, I'm just kind of tired of having to be responsible and to serve and to work, so I'm just going to go my own way.

Right, but again, if you have a liberal school of thought, you can always come up with something. So, let's say he just divorces her.

She did not commit adultery against him, he didn't commit adultery against her, he just says,

I'm done. Based on what Jesus says, and I want to be clear on this, does this divorce by itself, in isolation, make her definitionally an adulteress?

Does his sin of just abandoning her, does that by definition, she is now classified as adulteress?

I don't think that's what Jesus is saying. Because adultery is very clearly defined, what it is.

Okay? Adultery is sexual sin with another man's wife or another woman's husband.

And so he's not, and before when he says adultery in the heart, he's being clear that that's from sexual lust.

So, what does he mean by this? That if he divorces his wife, it causes her to commit adultery.

Now, the language cause, the word for cause here, can mean anything from preparing her for, or making her ready to, or forces her into adultery.

If you have, so given the historical cultural situation, the idea is that divorcing his wife puts her into a socio -economic position of needing to get remarried.

She's got nothing. What has she got? Who can she go to?

What can happen? She can be a massive burden upon her family, she can be a beggar, what's going to happen? What's she going to do in this

Jewish society, in the ancient Near East, if she gets divorced? What's going to happen? If she's not old enough, if she's an elderly woman, and something terrible happens, and she's a widow, then there's a support system.

If she's younger, there's no support system. So, what is Jesus saying?

He's saying, think about what you're doing. Think about what position you're putting her into, right?

You're putting her into a position of preparing her, making her ready to, or forcing her into adultery.

So, Jesus is saying, this is wrong. Now, in the case, what is this so -called escape clause, as some people put it?

In the case of sexual immorality, the divorce does not cause the woman to commit adultery.

Why? Because she already did, right? So, in this case, if the woman commits adultery, and the man divorces her, he doesn't cause her to commit adultery.

She already did. Okay? That's the point Jesus is making. In that case, the man is not doing something additional, because she's the one who did something additional.

So, in the case that sexual immorality had occurred, the divorce doesn't cause her to commit adultery.

Sexual immorality, I want you to hear this. I think this is how Jesus puts it here in Matthew 19.

We're going to look at that. 1 Corinthians 7, we're going to look at that. Sexual immorality is not an escape clause which makes divorce perfectly fine.

Divorce is always perfectly awful. Okay? I want you to hear that.

I think that's the unanimous testimony of the Scriptures. Divorce is a catastrophe that rocks the tectonic plates of what it means to be human.

Don't want anybody to go through that. And somebody who goes through that, well, we can thank

God for his grace and his mercy, but it doesn't change the fact about what divorce is.

So, when Jesus is going to go on to the next antithesis about your

SPS and your no, no, he's going to talk about that, and he doesn't give any really further application here, but given the surrounding verses,

I think that there's a lot to meditate on. When you think about the sin of lust in the previous passage, and then what comes after it would be called basically the sin of lying, right, trying to use religious speech to get out of what you actually meant, not letting your yes be yes, not letting your no be no, so lust and lying.

Do you see how Jesus in his wisdom brackets the issue of divorce with lust and lying? It's no mistake that those concerns flank the issue of divorce because broken marriages are generally, typically plagued by those two sins, okay?

Lust and lying are going to be huge issues in the end of a marriage.

Not always, but I'd say that those are common. Now, let's think about some further instruction here to give ourselves some ballast.

So, let's look at Matthew 19. Matthew 19, and beginning in verse 3, and in this passage you're going to hear more of that additional context and background that Jesus is speaking to regarding the current understanding of the times, the current understanding of Moses.

The Pharisees also came to him testing him and saying to him, is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for just any reason?

So they want him to weigh in on the debate between the school of Shammai and the school of Hillel. Is it divorce her for burnt toast or divorce her only for immorality?

And he answered and said to them, have you not read that he who made them at the beginning made them male and female and said, for this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife and the two shall become one flesh?

So, Jesus stitches together two quotes from Genesis 1 .27

and Genesis 2 .24 and he says, haven't you read

God's original design for marriage? So then, Jesus concludes, now he's going to interpret and apply the word of God from Genesis 1 and 2.

So then, they are no longer two but one flesh, therefore what God has joined together let not man separate.

And you'll notice the period. You see the period?

Don't blow past the period because he's done at that point.

You see that? And everything else that comes after that is the

Pharisees and then the disciples saying, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

You can't just leave it there. Come on.

And Jesus is just dealing with every single thing that comes up. The fact of the matter is he made everybody in the room uncomfortable because they wanted to know if he was side

A or side B. He just said no, neither one. The debate shouldn't even be happening.

They said to him, why then did Moses give a command to give her a certificate of divorce and put her away? He said to them,

Moses, because of the hardness of your hearts. See, he's dealing with the same people of the same old covenant, isn't he?

And this generation before him, which is a wicked and perverse generation, stands in covenantal solidarity with the same generation that Moses talked to coming out of Egypt at Sinai.

And he says, it's the hardness of your hearts. You see how they stand under the same consideration, the same issues of judgment?

Because that's how the old covenant worked. The hardness of your hearts permitted you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so.

Do you hear that? There was a time before Moses. There was a design before Moses.

This was something that Moses did because of the hardness of their heart, because he was dealing with the rampant sexual immorality plaguing their nation.

He had to come in with this additional instruction about having to stem the tide of further sexual abomination.

It was the hardness of their hearts, that's why. Jesus said that from the beginning it was not so.

And I say to you, whoever divorces his wife except for sexual immorality and marries another commits adultery.

Right? And whoever marries her who is divorced commits adultery. Again, what was the point? If the adultery hadn't happened beforehand, it will certainly happen later.

And again, the reason why they're harping on getting divorced and remarried was because they saw this as a righteous way to be with whoever they wanted to be with.

They go, okay, I'm done with my current spouse, I want a different one, but in order to do it righteously

I've got to go through this whole legal proceeding. He's like, no, you're still committing adultery. You're still sinning.

Yes. And, yeah, I mean that's...

and so we talked about last time the penalty for adultery is death even as with murder.

Verse 10, his disciples said to him, if such is the case of the man with his wife, it is better not to marry.

The disciples said, that's a little too harsh, Jesus. We weren't raised that way, that's not our expectation.

We were raised to think of marriage in a completely different way. And Jesus said, well, then don't get married.

Verse 11, but he said to them, all cannot accept this saying, but only those to whom it has been given.

For there are eunuchs who were born thus from their mother's womb, and then there are eunuchs who were made eunuchs by men, and then there are eunuchs who made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven's sake.

He was able to accept it, let him accept it. And so there are eunuchs who are born thus, physical deformity.

There are some eunuchs made eunuchs by men, the Ethiopian eunuch whom Philip evangelized, and then there are some who just say,

I'm going to go serve the Lord, I'm not going to get married, and I'm like, Paul. Okay?

Yeah. Jesus said, yeah, there are exceptions to the norm, but you either accept

God's design for marriage as it is or not at all. Men should not come up with all sorts of modifications to marriage.

Every single one of those modifications is poisonous and bad. Yeah. He is.

And one last consideration I think will be in 1 Corinthians 7, verses 10 through 16.

1 Corinthians 7, verses 10 through 16. And Paul, as he goes through here, he's going to be, he's going to clarify where Jesus' teaching in the

Gospels has been handed down and brought forward, and where Paul himself is an apostle of Christ, still with the authority of Christ, continues with that instruction.

Okay? So let's hear what he has to say. Now to the married I command, yet not I but the Lord. A wife is not to depart from her husband, but even if she does depart, let her remain unmarried or be reconciled to her husband, and a husband is not to divorce his wife.

Period. You notice that? Because Jesus said the same thing. What God has joined together, let not man separate.

And now you notice that Paul is writing to the people in Corinth, so now he's talking about wives divorcing their husbands.

Not a thing in Jewish culture, but in the wider Hellenistic culture it is a thing.

It's something that was happening in the Roman Empire. Okay? So he's bringing this up now. Now, notice how he applies

Jesus' statements that were all about what the husband should and shouldn't do, and he applies it to the wife here, saying this is what the

Lord meant. Kind of gives us a clue about how not to try to read

Jesus' instructions so limited to try to make sure that we can still do whatever we want.

It's a common interpretive scheme, right? Someone reads Jesus and says, well, he never forbade homosexuality.

You know, it's like, come on. Verse 12, but to the rest

I, not the Lord, say, again, this is not Paul saying you don't have to follow this part.

He's an apostle of Christ, he's just clarifying that he's bringing new instruction along to help the church.

But to the rest, I, not the Lord, say, if any brother has a wife who does not believe and she is willing to live with him, let him not divorce her.

And a woman who has a husband who does not believe, if he is willing to live with her, let her not divorce him.

For the unbelieving husband is sanctified by the wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified by the husband. Otherwise your children would be unclean, but now they are holy.

Now, what does this mean? Imagine that you are a run -of -the -mill pagan

Corinthian family, and as he says to the wife or to the husband, one of you gets saved, one of you becomes a

Christian, praise God. And the spouse does not believe, and you have, and you're wanting to have children or you have children in this family where you have an unbelieving spouse, and who knows if the kids are believers or not.

And you're thinking to yourself, how can I continue? Like, how can

I continue in this familial relationship as a Christian when most of my rest of my family are not?

My own spouse is not a Christian. Is it right for me to stay in this relationship? Is it right for me to stay in this family?

Is this something that is good and pleasing to God? I can't see how it could be. But Paul is saying, it is.

It is. Welcome to the new covenant, right? Wherein you are holy, you are clean, you're in Christ, and you being in this family makes that whole family good before God's eyes, right?

It's not the reverse. It's not the reverse where the husband is a non -believer, therefore his uncleanness gets off all on you, and the kids are unclean, so now you're unclean too.

That's Old Covenant, right? But this is the reverse. So, is he saved yet?

No. Are the kids Christians yet? No. Is God pleased for you to stay in that marriage and to stay in that family, and he wants to stay, and the husband wants to stay?

Yeah. Okay, husband, your wife's not a Christian yet, she wants to stay? Yeah. Okay, this is good.

This is good. Continue. So, I hope you can see the practicality of that instruction.

There have been some who have taught that marriage and family is bad. Marriage and family should not be prioritized.

Marriage and family are an idol. Marriage and family are oppressive. To be really holy is to go die alone, bringing back the whole hermit thing.

Now, notice verse 15.

But if the unbeliever departs, let him depart. A brother or sister is not under bondage in such cases, but God has called us to peace.

For how do you know, O wife, whether you will save your husband, or how do you know, O husband, whether you will save your wife? So notice two things.

One, you should live in hope. You should live in hope. You have no idea what's going to happen.

You have no idea whether your unbelieving spouse is going to come to faith in Jesus Christ by your witness. Peter gives specific instructions to women about how to win their unbelieving husbands to the

Lord, right? And of course, in Ephesians 5, we have everything we need to see about a believing husband evangelizing his wife the way he loves her and treats her and deals with her, right?

So we have all that hope there, but notice also it says if the unbeliever departs, unwilling to remain in this relationship, let him depart.

A brother or sister is not under bondage in such case. So what is the broader teaching about this situation?

We are to be a holy people of peace and hope, not bondage. Now, let's be very practical and clear.

When a believer has an unbelieving spouse that you are tied to in all kinds of ways that are not simply legal, okay, and that person says,

I don't want to stay. Like, I'm not going to obey God's design, being made in God's image,

I'm not going to obey God's design, I'm going to go do, I'm leaving, I don't want to stay, I don't want to stay. You've done what you could to make peace, but you can't, and they want to leave.

Like, you are not under bondage in this case. You hear that? Now, let's be clear on this.

When someone, when a spouse desires to leave the marriage, and they are going to probably connect that with a lot of things that they say, but also a whole lot of things that they do.

Someone's going to, someone's going to try to bankrupt the family by spending all the money.

Someone's going to do all kinds of awful things and say all kinds of awful things, and everything they do says,

I'm done, I'm done, I'm done, I'm done, okay. And someone may be in a very sinister mood, and the whole thing's like,

I'm going to, I'm going to do everything I can to make this other person, I'm going to attack this other person all the time.

At a certain point, at a certain point, they have declared their desire to leave.

Now, I want to be as pastoral as I can about this, okay. If the believer has to be the one that signs the divorce papers, they're not the ones who left.

You hear me? You hear what I'm saying? The technicality of signing the divorce papers isn't that person leaving if the other person's already done left.

You see what I'm saying? As a pastor, I've encountered many situations in counseling where this has happened, okay, and the believer's like, but I, you know,

I'm not, I'm not supposed to be the one that divorces and leaves. I understand that, but you've not left.

You keep on trying to reconcile. You've been trying to make this work. You've been trying to heal the relationship.

You've been calling for mediation. You've been trying to stay, and all they're trying to do is kill you and ruin you, and they're using this attachment with you to try to eviscerate you with all their bitterness and poison.

They've done left, okay. Right, again, we're not supposed to reduce the marriage relationship down to the legal consideration, are we?

That's exactly what Jesus did not do, okay. One particular story, a dear woman who was a generous person and was very generous to my wife and I, early on, her husband abandoned her, left her, left her in dire straits, and she just never, ever, ever would do anything to, but he left.

I mean, he just, he was gone, and all kinds of problems were in her life because she would never, ever sign a divorce paper, and he wouldn't do it out of spite, okay, but she never wanted to leave.

She had to raise her daughter alone. She did everything she could to do the right thing, but she couldn't, but what happened was her elders finally led her to go ahead and sign that paper so that she could go ahead and help her daughter with things that needed to be helped with because she couldn't do it prior.

Did she leave? Did she, did she disobey? No, she didn't. She was not under bondage.

You see, she was not under bondage, okay. I'm trying to be as pastoral as I can there, okay.

Now, right, so when it comes to divorce,

Jesus says don't, okay. That's about as clear as we can make.

He just says don't, and in this case of sometimes there's possible need for some separation, for some mediation.

If there is a divorce because one wanted to leave and you had to let him go, there's a possibility of reconciliation, okay, as it says in the text, but in this case, we are to be a holy people of peace and hope, but not bondage, but in the case of divorce,

Jesus just says don't. Does it make sense? Okay, on to the antithesis on declarations, verses 33 through 35, or 36, and there's the old saying, again, you have heard it that it was said to those of old, you shall not swear falsely, but shall perform your oaths to the

Lord. So, verse 33, Isaiah, I'm sorry,

Matthew chapter 5, you shall not swear falsely, but perform your oaths to the

Lord. Now, that's kind of a specific issue it might seem like for Jesus to focus on, but it pertains well to the previous passage, and a failure here could undermine the pursuit of peace in the following antithesis about how to be at peace with others.

So, there are two broad ethical concerns in the Old Covenant to provide a landscape for this present concern.

Bearing God's name in vain, that's the third commandment, is one, and bearing false witness against a neighbor, the ninth commandment, are both far larger in their concern and application than this old saying, but they both give it proper context.

So, in Exodus 20 verse 7 and verse 16, that's where you're going to find the two commandments.

You should not bear the name of the Lord your God in vain. You should not bear false witness against a neighbor. But additionally, in Leviticus 19 verses 11 through 12 and in Numbers 30 verse 2, we're going to find the old saying, okay?

Verses 11 through 12 of Leviticus 19. You shall not steal nor deal falsely nor lie to one another, and you shall not swear by my name falsely, nor shall you profane the name of your

God. I am the Lord. And it goes on to further issues of honesty, okay?

And then in Numbers 30 and verse 2, we also find instruction, if a man makes a vow to the

Lord or swears an oath to bind himself by some agreement, he shall not break his word.

He shall do according to all that proceeds out of his mouth. So, now you can see where the old saying comes from, okay?

The basic concern in Jesus' day was that there was an inordinate practice of how one would swear to the truthfulness, the veracity of one's statements, and how you would make oaths.

Now, it's going to be helpful to remember this distinction. An oath is something you promise by God or by something less than God.

An oath is something you promise by God, and a vow is something you promise to God.

Hear the difference? Okay, an oath is something you promise by God, and then a vow is something you promise to God, which is why you find, you know,

Paul making vows and keeping them, even though Jesus says, don't make oaths, right?

Vows are not the same thing as oaths. But following through on either an oath or a vow would be understood as being something done unto

God. Now, verse 34, here's the new saying, but I say to you, do not swear at all, neither by heaven, for it is

God's throne, nor by the earth, for it is his footstool, nor by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great king, nor shall you swear by your head, because you cannot make one hair white or black.

So the question is, why are you swearing at all? Jesus said, don't do it at all.

The point of swearing, whether outright profanities and invective or the childish,

I swear on a stack of Bibles, either one is to do what?

Is to convince someone else that you are indeed speaking truly. Right?

Whether you're cussing like a sailor or using childish oaths, either one is trying to say to the other person, you better believe what

I'm saying, you see? And Jesus says, don't do that at all. To swear on such things is to be untruthful already.

You're going to swear by heaven, swear by earth, swear by Jerusalem, swear by your head.

This is to be dishonest in and of itself. You don't own heaven or anything in it. How can you put it up for collateral?

You don't own earth or control anything on it. You can't use that as your guarantee. You don't possess that city.

You don't even own or control yourself. So why are you swearing at all?

That's just adding to the dishonesty. Jesus says, here's the application, but let your yes be yes and your no, no.

For whatever is more than these is from the evil one. So Jesus calls for a simple ethic of truthful speech, of clear communication.

He says, don't dialogue like the devil. Don't speak like Satan. Remember that the

Greek word for the devil, diabolos, just means the through -thrower, dia - through, bolos, a thrower.

He's a pitcher. The devil is a pitcher. On the pitcher's mound, at the plate, he's trying to get something past you.

We are not to talk like that. We are not to be a pitcher hoping to snake our words past a batter. So let your yes be yes and your no be no.

Now, sometimes we'll see that Jesus was silent, wasn't He? He didn't say anything at all sometimes.

And sometimes Jesus did speak and not always was what He said understood by His hearers, but He was clear and perfect in His communication.

And we're going to look at an example of that. But simply to say this, whatever is more than these is from the evil one.

If you want an example of that, you can look in Matthew 23, verses 16 through 22.

Matthew 23, verses 16 through 22, Jesus says to the religious leaders, whoa, whoa, whoa, because of the way they use their words.

They're swearing by all this and the other and making distinctions. And they could say, well, I swore by this, but I don't have to keep it because it wasn't to this level.

But I want to show you an example of Jesus letting His yes be yes and His no, no, in a tough communication situation.

So we'll close on this, John chapter 18, John chapter 18, verses 33 and following.

Then Pilate entered the Praetorium again, called Jesus and said to Him, are You the King of the Jews? Now, how do you answer that question?

Especially when there's so much misunderstanding keeped up in that question, right?

If you just say yes at this point, you're just perpetuating the misunderstanding, right?

So when Jesus let your yes be yes and your no, no, He means more than being overly simplistic and just letting everybody else think the wrong thing.

Okay, so let's watch what Jesus does. He could say yes and just leave it there if He wanted to, couldn't He? But let's see what happens.

Then Jesus answered him, are you speaking for yourself about this or did others tell you this concerning me? See, He wants to know who's informing you of this idea of King of the

Jews because, you know, different ideas behind wherever the origin of that question came from.

So what do you mean by that? Who brought this up to you? Pilate answered, am

I a Jew? Your own nation and the chief priests have delivered you to me. What have you done?

Jesus answered, my kingdom is not of this world. So He gives them a yes and a no.

I have a kingdom, but it's not of this world. You see that? He's being clear. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would fight so that I should not be delivered to the

Jews. But now my kingdom is not from here. So He's telling the magistrate what the magistrate needs to know.

He needs to know, are you starting an insurrection? Right? Because it's His job to make sure that doesn't happen.

And if you're going to start an insurrection, are you trying to cause a civil war amongst the Jews over whom I'm in charge of?

Are you causing all this problem? So Jesus tells him clearly what the magistrate needs to know.

He's like, no, I have a kingdom. It's not of this world.

My followers are in this world, but they're not going to fight. They're not here to get into a civil war and insurrection.

Okay? Verse 37, Pilate therefore said to him, are you a king then?

Jesus answered, you say rightly that I am a king. For this cause I was born.

And for this cause, I have come into the world that I should bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth hears my voice.

You see how Jesus is handling this? Starting from a very loaded question to now evangelizing

Pilate. And Pilate said to him, what is truth? And when he said this, he went out again to the

Jews and said to them, I find no fault in him at all. Says the man who doesn't know what's true.

There's not a lot of confidence in that verdict. But you see how Jesus was clear.

Okay? He was clear about everything that needed to be said. When they asked a yes or no question,

I'm asking you a yes or no question. Are you the king of the Jews? Jesus gave him several yeses and several noes to clarify exactly what he meant by that.

And he didn't say something like, I swear by all the gold in the temple that my followers won't rise up against you.

No, he didn't say that. He let his yes be yes and his no, no. It gives an example of what to do as well.

So we have time for maybe one or two questions as we close.

Any feedback? He wanted to save his own skin.

He didn't have time to be curious. All right, let's close in prayer. Father, I thank you so much for the time you've given to us.

Lord, we thank you for the richness of your word. We thank you that you know our frame, that we are but dust, that you have love and concern for us, that your grace is a marvelous grace.