Introduction
Today, you’re probably going to wish you’d stayed at home, because I’m going to speak to you about marriage, divorce, remarriage, adultery and homosexuality.
I’m going to raise some sensitive and contentious issues, and I won’t sit on the fence. I’m also going to speak for longer than usual, because there is so much to be said.
However we feel about it, Mark 10.1-12 is in the Bible - and is, therefore, divine revelation, God’s word. I have no liberty to skip over, or explain away any passage of Scripture just because it might be puzzling or offensive; quite the reverse. Feeling uncomfortable with what we read in the Bible is all the more reason to engage with it.
Let’s just name some elephants in the room right away. We might find Mark 10.1-12 difficult for several different reasons.
- It might be because we are unmarried; perhaps unhappily so, either single or widowed, but in any case it may feel like this just doesn’t apply to my life.
- Or we might find it hard because we are divorced. Talk of marriage and marriage breakdown opens up unhealed wounds and stirs painful memories, maybe bitter regrets.
- Or perhaps it might be that we are now remarried after divorce. If that’s the case, the words of Jesus in v11-12 might be upsetting to hear.
- Or it might be because we are more attracted to members of the same sex than the opposite sex, or we have close family members that we love who are gay. I’ll come to that later; the passage does not comment directly on homosexuality as such, but it certainly does indirectly.
I want to say loud and clear as a preface to everything that follows that God loves everyone. God is love. There is nothing we can do that will change the thoughts of his heart towards us. His love is not based on feelings that might change if he were to learn something disagreeable about us.
There’s nothing for him to learn. He knows us through and through. He knows what we’re like when nobody’s looking, and he still loves us. God’s love is a settled, determined, committed attitude of his heart. And whatever else you take from this morning, please take that away.
Background
Well, let’s dive into the passage. We have reached a decisive phase in Mark’s Gospel where Jesus is now making his way to Jerusalem. In that city, he knows there will be a head-on collision with the authorities, but, as we’ve seen, this has been brewing for some time.
The first mention of a plot to kill Jesus comes as early as chapter 3. By now, his enemies are trying to set him up and that explains the question in v2.
Sometimes people ask questions because they genuinely don’t know the answer and want to. Other times, they just want to embarrass the speaker. Jesus faced constant questions designed to ensnare him; leading questions, loaded questions, trick questions.
The question in v2 is a trap. It actually says so. “Some Pharisees they came to test him by asking ‘Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?’” They don’t really care what the answer is. They are only interested in one thing; getting Jesus into trouble.
Everyone there knows what this question is about. It’s about King Herod, who has just ditched his own wife and taken his brother’s wife Herodias under his roof. It’s talk of the town. All the gossip magazines are full of it. It’s a national scandal.
But Herod has money and power. So while the Jews disapprove, because they want to keep their privileges, they keep quiet…
…Except one man; John the Baptist. Remember him? He doesn’t give a fig about position and reputation. Without fear or favour, he tells it like it is. So when he is asked what he thinks about Herod, he speaks his mind. It’s wrong to treat a woman like trash and throw her out when a husband gets tired of her. And as for Herod bringing his sexy sister-in-law into his playboy mansion, he calls it what it is: “adultery.” Well, that offends Herod, so they lock John up and eventually they behead him.
Can you see? This question is a minefield. It’s loaded and incendiary. If Jesus dares to say what John said, he’ll effectively pronounce his own death sentence and his enemies can be rid of him. That’s the background.
Divorce (v2-5)
So what does Jesus say? Will he sidestep the question to save his skin? Will he change the subject? Will he squirm and wriggle like a politician with John Humphreys?
Jesus does what he usually does; he replies by asking a question. And Jesus’ question, v3, is basically “What does the Bible say?” And they find a verse in Deuteronomy 24 that seems to say that there can be a case for divorce.
As a concession, being realistic that sometimes people can be hard-hearted, Moses made provision for divorce. The Pharisees were pushing for no-fault, easy divorces for frivolous reasons.
I would say that there are five scenarios where the Bible envisages the tragic possibility of divorce. And here they are:
In the case of adultery (Matthew 5.32), or sexual immorality (Matthew 19.9), or when a non-Christian partner walks out (1 Corinthians 7.10–24), for cruel neglect (Exodus 21) or what Malachi 2 calls “betrayal” which I think includes grievous breaking of marriage promises like domestic violence.
“It’s true; sadly, painfully, the Bible says, there are occasions when divorce is permitted,” says Jesus here, but it is a concession, not a requirement and it was never God’s best plan for us.
Divorce hurts people. It’s miserable. Lawyers get involved. People talk of their experience of divorce in the same terms as grief. If there are children, there are custody arrangements, and there’s quibbling over birthdays and holidays and weekend visits. It’s distressing.
The whole thing is horrible. It’s why God says he hates it. The Bible never says God hates divorcees. It says he hates divorce. It breaks his heart to see love fail, families torn in two, and lives ruined.
Marriage (v6-9)
But Jesus’ focus is not on how bad it’s got to get before people should see their solicitor. Instead, he emphasises what marriage should look like and what God intended.
He goes right back, before Moses, to the dawn of creation. Before it all got messy and the lawyers got involved, and all the fine print arrived, what was God’s original idea about marriage?
In v6-9 Jesus quotes Genesis 2.24. “At the beginning of creation, God made them male and female. For this reason, a man will leave his father and mother, be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh. So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”
This is the simplest, most foundational and most beautiful statement on marriage there is. It appears 4 times in the Bible; in Genesis 1, Matthew 19, Mark 10 and Ephesians 5.
It’s like a stool with three legs; take away any one leg and the stool falls down. The three legs are: leaving parents, uniting together, and becoming one.
Most problems in marriage, in my experience as a pastor, come down to a problem with one or more of the three things in v7.
Stool Leg 1: “A man will leave his father and mother.” Ideally, this means physically moving out, but leaving is necessary in other ways too.
Some couples never really cut the emotional or financial umbilical cord with their mothers or fathers. Some couples allow well-meaning but interfering parents to come between them. No, you have to leave.
Stool Leg 2: “He will be united to his wife.” Having broken one family circle, the next step is to form a new one. This is a serious, public and permanent, not just coming together, but joining together of two lives; one male and one female. Notice, Jesus says “What God has joined together, let no one separate.”
Cohabitation with no promises, no commitment, and no public affirmation is not the same as what Jesus talks about here.
Living together unmarried as an alternative to marriage is normal in today’s culture. Most people think that cohabiting is practice for marriage. Actually, research shows that more often it’s practice for divorce.
Sir Paul Coleridge, a former High Court judge, said in April this year: "Cohabiting couples are four times more likely to split up as divorcing [married] couples. This is the driver of the national tragedy of mass family breakdown.”
Stats were published in The Times last week showing that mental health problems are higher in children of cohabiting parents than children of married ones, higher still for children of divorced parents, and highest of all (38%) for children whose parents lived together unmarried but had split up.
Stool Leg 3: “And the two will become one flesh.”
This is the deeply wondrous braiding together in the sacred union of two lives, one male and one female – sexually and emotionally. Marriage is about biology; God has created us XX and XY with perfectly complementing bodies. Two become one, which mathematically is one less, but spiritually is much more. Paul (a single man remember) marvels about it in Ephesians 5, describing it as a profound mystery.
Remarriage after Divorce
As soon as Jesus is alone with his disciples (v10) they add more questions.
The culture of the first century was, in almost every aspect, different to the environment we live in today, with one exception – divorce then, as now, was on the increase.
Notice, back in v2, that the Pharisees were only concerned with men’s rights. “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?” But Jesus makes clear in v12 that he’s talking to men and women equally.
That was radical. In the pagan world, marriage as a loving and permanent friendship between a man and a woman was unheard of. According to Roman law, women were not persons but property and they had no rights as such. Orthodox Jewish men regarded women with condescension and contempt.
So Jesus spells it out in v11-12. Again, with the situation between Herod and Herodias at the forefront of everyone’s mind, Jesus says, “This is not marriage; it’s just adultery dressed up.”
Some of you are remarried after divorce.
- Did you go into your first marriage hoping for that outcome? None of you did.
- Were mistakes made? Certainly, probably on both sides.
- Are there things you would have changed, looking back? No doubt.
- Is everything that happened God’s best for you? No.
- In John 8, Jesus met a woman caught in the act of adultery. Did he say what she had done was OK? Emphatically no.
- Did he give her a new start? Absolutely.
Shortly after a well-publicised sexual scandal in Bill Clinton’s White House, the evangelist Billy Graham was invited to attend an event there. And, without hesitation, he went.
People were outraged that a man of God would associate with that whole scene of sexual immorality and adultery and sleaze. But Billy Graham said, “It’s the Holy Spirit’s job to convict, it’s God’s job to judge, and it’s my job to love.”
Homosexuality
I feel now I should say some words about homosexuality. Why? Because in 2014 the UK government legislated for “marriage” between two people of the same sex.
Churches are not required to offer such ceremonies if they do not wish to, and in the Church of England, we cannot offer them even if a vicar wanted to. This is a position I support.
Not least because Jesus says here in v7 “a man shall leave his father and mother” not “his mother and mother” or his “father and father.” Furthermore, he says “the man shall be united to his wife” not “his husband.” Nor does he say the woman shall be united to her wife.” “This is how God made it at the beginning,” he says.
But now, just three years after the law was changed here, some people are pressing for an amendment. People say “The church has to move with the times.” Voices in parliament and church synods alike are arguing vociferously for the legal exemption of the Church of England to be removed. This, I strongly oppose.
Before I say any more, I need to just pause and say that the media concentrate almost exclusively on two extremes you find in the church.
Firstly, they give great prominence to extremist groups who picket pride marches and hold up banners saying “God hates gays” and “Go to hell.” I absolutely denounce that. It is appalling and brings shame on Christianity. It is inconceivable that Jesus would do that.
But secondly, the media also gives prominence to liberal voices in the church, who reinterpret the Bible or reject it altogether, and who are energetically campaigning in support of homosexual partnerships.
Living at either extreme is easy. The much trickier path to tread is the middle way. It’s full of tensions. The media aren’t interested in it at all.
The middle way says we are radically committed to loving everyone, as made in the image of God, without conditions, and we are radically committed to truth as revealed in God’s word, however unpopular, however countercultural.
The truth is that all of us - bar no one; all of us - have sexual temptation. You do and I do. And all of us are called to battle against temptation, and to live holy lives according to the maker’s instructions. And all of us, no exceptions, need daily grace to do that.
We have to hold our nerve on love and not give in to hate. We have to hold our nerve on truth too. My convictions on marriage being for one man and one woman, shared by the overwhelming majority of Christians down the centuries, will certainly come under greater and greater attack.
Just three years after a free vote in Parliament on same-sex marriage legislation, it is now impossible for political leaders to be evangelical Christians, even if they keep their beliefs private, as we have seen this year.
The same pressures will come on church leaders. They are here already. The journalist Piers Morgan recently interviewed American pastor Rick Warren on his chat show. He pressed him relentlessly and forcefully about gay marriage. Warren calmly and respectfully defended his beliefs saying, “I fear God’s disapproval more than man’s.”
The line of questioning you hear the most is, “Why do you Christians think homosexuality is wrong?” and “Why is being gay a sin?” They are leading questions. In fact, you have to define your terms. It depends what you mean “being gay.” Do you just mean drawn to the same sex? Or are you talking about actual sexual intimacy?
I prefer the language of “same-sex attraction.” I have friends, Christian friends, who tell me they are same-sex attracted, but are not looking to be in a relationship, and they don’t label themselves “gay.”
“My identity,” they say, “is not about campaigning for a certain lifestyle to be embraced and promoted; my identity is that I am a child of God. I want to live as a disciple of Jesus. For you that means denying yourself in all sorts of ways, treasuring Jesus above all else. For me, treasuring Jesus above all else includes saying ‘no’ to a sexual relationship.”
In the media, there is an unrelenting agenda that is driving and setting public opinion. People are named and shamed if they disagree. Christians fear getting the sack if their private beliefs are discovered. That is uncomfortable.
But the New Testament norm is that Christians should feel like they don’t quite fit in with the world around them at work or in their neighbourhood. Our values and lifestyle should be noticeably different. The New Testament says we should expect to face scorn and contempt for the sake of Christ. Hebrews 11 says that all the great men and women in the Old Testament were ‘strangers on earth,’ misfits.
The bottom line for me is this; one day, the Bible says, I will stand before Christ and he will ask me to give an account to him of my record as a church leader. James 3 says, “Not many of you should become teachers, my fellow believers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly.”
Jesus won’t care about how popular I was, or how successful I was. He will ask me, “How faithful were you to my word?”
I’ve never before felt like I needed to take legal advice before preparing a sermon, but it almost felt that way before this one. Should the talk go on the website? Will it invite hostility from campaign groups?
I spoke one-to-one with members of our preaching team about marriage, divorce, remarriage, adultery and homosexuality. Some of us have close family members (a brother, or a son, or a daughter who is cohabiting, divorced and remarried or gay so it wasn’t academic). I wanted to be able to say to you this morning that we are all of one mind and I am pleased to say that we are.
You can sum up the thoughts of our preaching team in three points.
1) Everybody Is Welcome: Anybody can come to this church. Every last one is welcome. It doesn’t matter how good or bad you are; All Saints’ has an open door. It was while we were still sinners that Christ died for us. God loves you. Whoever you are, you are welcome, we hope you will feel loved and will want to stay.
Somebody spoke to me once, very anxious that I might throw them out of the church because they had begun a same-sex relationship. I said, “No, of course, you’re welcome to stay.” I also gave absolute clarity on what I believe the Bible teaches.
2) All Can Serve: Just as anyone can come here, we encourage every last one to serve God and serve others. Helping with maintenance, being on the welcome team, serving drinks, cleaning the church, operating the sound desk, arranging flowers, doing admin, sewing banners, cooking meals etc., etc, even if you are still on a journey and are not yet sure if you are a Christian you can get involved.
3) Leadership Means Lifestyle: While everyone can serve, there are some leadership roles, like leading children’s and youth work, preaching, leading worship, and doing prayer ministry where leaders must set an example of living a holy life. In sexual morality terms, that will exclude living together unmarried or being in a homosexual partnership because that is what the Bible teaches.
What If I’m Wrong?
In the face of the constant media pressure on this issue, especially when leaders who I once respected began to say exactly what the world is saying, I started to do a lot of thinking.
I sat down about a year ago and said, “What if I’ve got this all wrong? What if this is a massive blind spot, like slavery was for Christians in the 18th century?
What if the Holy Spirit is leading the church into a new understanding? Remember in Acts 10 when Peter was told to eat foods previously forbidden by God in the Old Testament? It was hard to come to terms with. “Surely not Lord!” Peter said. He thought the Bible was clear on the matter. It was clear on the matter. But God was doing something new. Could it be that this is like that?
Firstly, I looked hard at Scripture. What does it really say? I studied all the Bible references on sex and marriage, including the explicit references to homosexuality. I consulted several translations. I looked up the commentaries. I read articles from people advocating different views. I tried to be as fair-minded and objective as possible.
I found that the Bible speaks with great clarity and unity. God has revealed his mind to us and you have to twist the Scriptures horribly out of shape or reject them altogether to arrive at a conclusion that is any different to what the vast majority of Christians have believed for twenty centuries.
Secondly, I considered the impact on the church. Whenever the Holy Spirit does something new, he brings life, he brings blessing, and he brings growth. People come to faith, new songs are written, and churches get planted. These are the hallmarks of God at work.
In the case of Peter and the vision about unclean food, it led to a major breakthrough for the gospel – it crossed a great divide and Gentiles started to come to faith in huge numbers.
If the Holy Spirit is leading the church into fresh and exciting discoveries of truth on human sexuality, you would expect that churches promoting these new ideas will be growing, and vibrant.
But they are not. We are not seeing growth, or blessing, or great outpourings of the Holy Spirit, still less revival in those churches that claim the classic understanding of the Bible is wrong.
In fact, quite the reverse: those denominations are in steep decline, and church closures are accelerating. God is leaving the building.
At the same time, local churches that felt they had no choice but to leave their liberal denominations, even at the cost of lawsuits and losing their buildings, are thriving. New Christians are being added to the church, young people are coming forward for ordination, churches are multiplying, and the gifts of the Spirit are flowing.
Jesus said that the health of a tree is measured by its fruit. A good tree doesn’t produce bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit. Thus by their fruits you shall recognise them.
Testimony
Before I end, I want to share a testimony from a church leader in the south of England that I came across in my preparation for this talk which shows what grace can do. Here it is:
I grew up in a non-Christian family and made a decision to follow Christ when I was 16. I call the first 5 years of my new Christian life “the honeymoon period” as things were amazing and I grew deeper and deeper in love with Jesus who had saved me from so much.
However, at 21 things changed. I knew I was gay from about the age of 5. People often question me about this as 5 seems so young but, believe me, I knew that I was different and I knew that I was attracted to the same sex. I had struggled for years to hide this and so when I found Jesus, I thought it would all go away. And for those early years, things did seem to.
At 21 however, through a series of events (all of my own making) I had a gay affair. I met him via a phone chat line and gave myself over to sleeping with him. I was totally torn apart. I believed the Bible said that being gay was the worst sin ever and so I lived in fear of being found out and thrown out of the church family that I had grown to love and feel part of. I was pulled between wanting to sleep with this guy and wanting to stop.
One night, I had a dream where God clearly spoke to me about being honest. So with a lot of trepidation, I arranged to meet with someone. When I told him, he was cool, calm and non-judgemental, but I could tell underneath he was unsure what to do and I left the meeting feeling totally scared about what would happen next. To be honest, things didn’t go well and, in hindsight, some decisions were made that made matters worse rather than better.
The next 4 or 5 years were incredibly painful and left me feeling alone, rejected, misunderstood and shameful. I responded to the pain and loneliness I felt by moving from one gay encounter to the next. If I was doing well then things were OK, but when I was down, depressed or hurt, I would reach out to the nearest man for intimacy, and sex meant I was wanted. I ended up with an eating disorder, lots of self-hate, fear of men (especially of those in authority over me) and living a secret double-life, and it hit an all-time low when I agreed to have sex for money. Prostitution had never been the plan for my life and it hit me hard that I’d reached that place.
So why did I live a double-life? Simply because there was no way I was going to be honest again, because honesty just brought more pain.
So what changed? How did I move on? Well, at 27, I went to work with a ministry in Hong Kong that reaches out to prostitutes, addicts and street sleepers. What I saw there was an expression of grace I had never seen before. It blew my brain, to be honest, and God used my time there to take me on a journey of inner healing that wasn’t about simply cutting the rotten fruit off the tree of my life because, let’s face it, rotten fruit just grows back.
No, this journey was one of finding the deeper problems that lay below the surface. I found life-changing freedom from issues such as the self-hate, fear and low self-worth as I allowed God to meet me in these putrid and painful places. As I took off all my masks and kicked down all my barriers of self-defence, it was a journey of allowing love, grace and mercy to become real experiences and not just words.
Over time, I found that all the rotten fruit in my life stopped growing. After a year working amongst the disadvantaged of Hong Kong I returned to the UK a changed person.
Within 2 years I met the woman who was to become my wife and we married in 2000. 4 years later I became a father to the first of my 2 children. In disciplining me, God has brought me through to freedom, and freedom has allowed me to walk into greater levels of holiness with him. I’m no longer ashamed about my past, I live free from guilt and shame through the Son of God who loves me and died for all my sins.
I must be honest with you. I have other friends who are also living happy and holy lives as same-sex attracted people but whose sexual orientation has not changed. In fact, it usually doesn’t change – but it certainly can.
Ending
As I draw to a close, can I just say that this has been a really hard message to prepare and preach. It’s the longest message I’ve ever preached.
It occurred to me as I sat down to prepare it that people might decide to leave All Saints’, either because it’s too soft, or because it’s too hard. Or perhaps because it’s too long! That would make me sad, but this is a “here I stand” moment for me.
I know it leaves many questions unanswered, big questions, good questions, which we just don’t have time to go into. Questions like:
- Didn’t Jesus tell us to not judge people? This looks like judging to me.
- If God made me with particular desires, how can it be a sin?
- Jesus said nothing directly about homosexuality, so why is the church so obsessed with it?
- Isn’t it cruel to expect people to forego intimacy for a whole lifetime?
- Didn’t Jesus tell us to not judge people? This looks like judging to me.
- If God made me with particular desires, how can it be a sin?
- Jesus said nothing directly about homosexuality, so why is the church so obsessed with it?
- Isn’t it cruel to expect people to forego intimacy for a whole lifetime?
So I want to recommend some books for further reading if you’d like to explore more.
They have one thing in common; none is written by a happily married heterosexual. All but one are written by same-sex attracted Christians who are committed to living holy lives in happy obedience to God’s word. The other is written by John Stott, who died in 2015 having never married.
The list is printed in the pew sheet. (Is God Anti‑Gay? by Sam Allberry, The Plausibility Problem by Ed Shaw, Washed and Waiting by Wesley Hill, Same-Sex Relationships? by John Stott and Walking with Gay Friends by Alex Tylee).
Finally: we, the church, are called, whatever the cost (remember what happened to John the Baptist) to preach the simple gospel of Jesus Christ which is as effective for sexually broken people as it is for anyone else.
The blessings of knowing Jesus and being reconciled to God are everlasting and all-embracing, and they expose the false promises of sin as woefully lacking.
The gospel tells the truth about: the reality of sin, the necessity of repentance, the all-satisfying preciousness of forgiveness, the joy of obedience, and the freedom from guilt and shame.
Sermon preached at All Saints' Preston on Tees, 26 November 2017
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