Sermon 10-6-24

Pastor Ray Lorthioir

Trinity Lutheran Church

W. Hempstead, NY

Based on the Gospel for the 20th Sunday after Pentecost, Mark 10:2-16.

Something Is Terribly Wrong

Yahweh, the Son, became incarnate in a human body. That totally incomprehensible thing happened in a totally incomprehensible way — in the womb of a virgin woman. And so a virgin woman gave birth. That’s not very possible. And so down through the ages there have been some who have mocked the virgin birth of the Messiah. On the other hand, there is a purity to Yahweh’s action that captures the spirit and the heart. And so for two thousand years, the virgin birth of Jesus has wrapped millions of hearts in the mystery and mystical joy of mother and son. And biblically speaking, there’s a lot to explore in the picture of mother and son. But we’ll save that for Christmas.

However, there’s another person in the picture — a man who was called upon to raise a child not biologically his own. That’s not an easy thing for a man to do. But, if you’re called upon by Yahweh to raise Yahweh, the Son, I guess you do it. And so, Jesus of Nazareth was raised by a day laborer named Joseph who took Mary as his wife.

Now, other than an incident when Jesus was twelve, Scripture tells us absolutely nothing about Jesus’ life before He became famous. Scripture doesn’t waste any space on the normal things normal people have to do to live and survive.

But apparently Jesus supported himself as a day laborer until He was thirty, following in Joseph’s footsteps. This is one reason that when Jesus exploded on the scene as a Jewish Rabbi, the “real” Jewish rabbis put this day laborer to the test. He hadn’t gone to any approved seminary. But, then, if you’re the very source of Scripture, what’s there to study?

But that’s not all. As a rabbi, Jesus was severely critical of the very foundation of the Pharisee sect of Judaism — namely the oral traditions and the oral law supposedly given to Moses on Mount Sinai. Jesus disavowed such traditions and taught out of Moses and the Prophets exclusively.

In addition, abundant, impossible miracles flowed out of Jesus. Scripture tells us that the miracles produced such intense jealousy in the Pharisees that they accused Jesus of doing miracles by sorcery.

In Jewish history, we hear nothing of Pharisees until about 150B.C. They’re late-comers in Jewish history. However, in the turmoil that followed the Roman-Jewish war of 67-70A.D., the Pharisees were the only Jewish sect left standing. Thus, with the priesthood and the temple gone, it was they who rebuilt Judaism into the rabbinic Judaism we know today.

Now, I wonder why the Pharisees chose a question about divorce to test Jesus. I did a little research to see if there was a reason, but with no results. So, we’ll let that lay. However, whatever the reason for the question, the Pharisees received a most useful and instructive answer from Jesus. Perhaps it was for this very reason that Yahweh programmed the Pharisees to ask the question.

So, we read again in Mark 10:2-5, “2 And Pharisees came up and in order to test him asked, ‘Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?’ 3 He answered them, ‘What did Moses command you?’ 4 They said, ^‘Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of divorce and to send her away.’ 5 And Jesus said to them, ‘Because of your hardness of heart he wrote you this commandment.’”

With the typical Jewish teaching technique of establishing an answer through questions, Jesus schooled the Pharisees. And so Jesus declared the reason behind all divorce to be: hardness of heart. Such hardness comes from a series of decisions against a spouse that form in the heart until a point is reached where the heart declares the spouse to be an enemy. Or until the heart says, “I can do better.” 

There’s a second part to Jesus’ answer. Mark 10:6-9, “6 ‘But from the beginning of creation, “God made them male and female.” 7 “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, 8 and the two shall become one flesh.” So they are no longer two but one flesh. 9 What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.’”

With these words, Jesus let it be known that something has gone terribly wrong in the world, because divorce was never supposed to be part of the picture. What’s gone wrong? What produces hardness of heart? Those questions unite both parts of Jesus’ answer.

The Bible has an interesting structure. It begins with Genesis chapters 1 and 2 — the perfection that was and was meant to be. It ends with Revelation chapters 21 and 22 — the perfection that will be. And everything in between is the disastrous imperfection that everything presently is. Of course, there’s more to the Bible’s structure than this. But the reason I’m pointing this out is because Jesus pointed the structure out with His answer to the Pharisees. 

The reason for divorce is the rebellion that began in Genesis chapter 3 and will last until Revelation 20. That rebellion continues to produce in us all hardness of heart toward our Creator, Yahweh. And it’s from this hardness that every other hardness of heart proceeds.

To begin our analysis of Jesus’ statements, let’s again take a look at Yahweh’s purposes in creating us. Genesis 1:26-27, “26 Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.’ 27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.”

We were created to be Image bearers — bearing the Image of our Creator. That Image is many things. First, and primarily, it means that we are spiritual creatures. You and I are spirits living in a body.

This is contrary to the materialistic philosophy that grew up in the late 1800’s and has dominated western thinking since then. Materialism says that there is no such thing as spirit. There is no spiritual realm. There is no Creator God who is Spirit.

Unfortunately for atheistic Materialism, tens of thousands of Near Death Experiences are proving it wrong. So much so, that even science — which has been lost in materialist philosophy for a century — has been forced to grudgingly admit that human beings have a spirit that survives the death of the physical, human body. This is what Christianity and Judaism have been saying for centuries. Indeed, even pagan religions believe that the spirit survives physical death. The only question remaining is the condition of the spirit after death. But that’s for another time.

So, we are spirits joined in a most marvelous way to our physical bodies. Our spirits were meant to bear the Image of God. And apparently our physical bodies were meant to do the same. That’s clear from Genesis 1.

Next, Yahweh created human beings to have authority — dominion — over the rest of His creation. The rest of Scripture makes it clear that from Revelation 21 and 22 onward, this dominion will be over all of creation — even the parts that are presently unseen by us. But that’s for another time.

Last, Yahweh created us male and female. Startling news! Human sexuality is Yahweh’s idea. Not ours.

Going on, we read in Genesis 1:28, “And God blessed them. And God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.’” For our purposes today we’re going to ignore subduing the earth and having authority over every living creature. We’ll simply concentrate on being fruitful, multiplying and filling the earth.

When Yahweh created humanity, He didn’t create us by the millions and billions. He created exactly two — a male and a female. So, there was only one way we were going to fill the earth. And that was by having children and generations of children’s children. Therefore, the whole program of human mating and reproducing is not our idea. It’s our Creator’s command. In answering the Pharisees, Jesus invoked Yahweh’s Word for human sexuality and family at the beginning.

And Jesus invoked one more Scripture. We read in Genesis 2:20-24, “20. . . for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him. 21 So the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. 22 And the rib that the LORD God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. 23 Then the man said, ‘This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.’ 24 Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.”

Jesus keyed in on verse 24. A man — one man — shall hold fast to his one wife — wife, and not lover. This means marriage. Period. So, Yahweh declared that in marriage the bonding of one partner to the other is so spiritual, so close and so holy that two bodies are joined in one flesh. And this is also what our offspring are — literally one body out of two bodies. In addition verse 24 tells us that Yahweh’s intention was one male and one female, not two males or two females. Also, polygamy was not Yahweh’s intention. Polygamy was tolerated by Yahweh after Genesis 3, but we see here in Genesis 2 that it’s not His plan.

In the wake of Genesis 3, adultery, fornication and prostitution arose. Nevertheless, St. Paul informs us that even in the most casual of sexual encounters, the spiritual one flesh power that Yahweh imbued human sexuality with remains in action. Violating that power has consequences to this day.

All of this comes from Genesis chapters 1 and 2. Human sexuality, marriage and the family was part of the original holy perfection that Yahweh intended. This is why Jesus brought Genesis 1:27 and Genesis 2:24 together and shoved them in the Pharisees faces. That’s also why He shoves these verses in our faces. For, if these verses are Yahweh’s holy and righteous will for us, something is terribly wrong.

And this is where Genesis chapter 3 comes into the picture. We’ve seen the Serpent — the Nachash — before. He’s a most mysterious creature. But in Christian theology he’s usually understood to be Satan, whose name means Accuser.

It appears that the spiritual being, Satan, masqueraded in the body of an ancient serpent. For he spoke and interacted with Eve. I’ve elaborated before on this interaction. Therefore, we’ll zero in on the statement of the serpent in Genesis 3:5, “. . . ‘God knows that when you eat of it [the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil ] your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.’”

When both Eve and Adam ate of the fruit, it was just as the serpent had said. They were transformed from the Image of God into the Likeness of God. They could act as God, defining good and evil for themselves. They could then act on their own definitions. But in the process they lost the all-important Image of God that they were designed to bear. They also brought down death and many other judgments upon themselves that we all live with to this day. But it’s the Image of God that concerns us here.

We must understand this about our existence and the existence of everything: Yahweh is an uncreated Creator. This means that everything that exists proceeds from Him and Him alone. There is no other. And He has no creator. He is uncreated.

Since everything that exists comes from Yahweh, this means that Yahweh is the very root and source of all goodness. He is the source of all righteousness. There is no other. Without Yahweh, there is no existence. Without Yahweh there is no righteousness.

Therefore, losing the Image of Yahweh remains utterly and completely devastating for humanity. We are like Him in that we can decide good and evil for ourselves. But we can no longer choose Yahweh’s holy goodness in any perfect or complete way. Instead, rebellion against Yahweh’s goodness is our natural state. Rebellion is what Original Sin and the sinful nature are all about. We’re born with it. And as St. Paul puts it in Romans 6, we’re slaves to sin instead of being the slaves to Yahweh’s righteousness that we were designed to be.

Rebellion against Yahweh is the source of all of life’s trouble and disaster. And divorce is just one symptom of the rebellion. As I’ve often said, if someone were to get up in hell and demand, “OK. Who’s God around here?” Every voice would cry out, “I am.” And that’s when the “fun” would begin. Gods don’t get along with other gods for a simple reason. There can only be one God.

Therefore, when you put two human god-players under the same roof, the struggle for who will be God commences. This is the hardness of heart Jesus spoke of. It comes from being in the Likeness of God instead of the Image of God. Nevertheless, the design for a man to leave his father and mother and cleave to a wife remains. And so, we respond to what our Creator has built into us.

Earlier in the week, I was listening to a talk by Canadian psychiatrist, Jordan Peterson. In it he analyzed the modern concept of couples living together outside of marriage. This thing arose in the 1960’s when the fallacy that marriage is just a piece of paper was first proclaimed as the truth. Peterson exposes the “piece of paper” fallacy for the lie it is when he poses this question: “well, if marriage is just a piece of paper, then why not sign it?” 

Peterson pointed out that living together with no marriage commitment really means several things. First, the parties are together because they can’t find anyone better at the moment. Second, the lack of commitment means that both parties are free to trade up if they can find someone they think better. Third, there is no future, no hope in the relationship. And that’s a pretty miserable way to live. Fourth, there is no such thing as a marriage simulator. You’re either committed in marriage or you’re not. Therefore, the idea that living together is a test for marriage is bunk. 

Before, I go on, I would just note that these four god-playing attitudes brought on by the “marriage is a piece of paper” fallacy also seem to be present in the heads of couples who do marry. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have the divorce rate we have.

Peterson also cited Psychiatric pioneer Carl Jung who believed that marriage is like a container — a container that produces heat and pressure so intense that the “base metal” of human hearts is refined into something more noble. Marriage is a container because of the vows couples take to remain loyal and committed to each other. And there’s definitely heat and pressure because as Peterson puts it: “You’re stuck with that person and they’re stuck with you. You made a vow. I’m stuck with you just like I’m stuck with me.”

But Jung was in error in his optimism that the pressure cooker of marriage could in and of itself produce refinement for humans. For it’s in the pressure cooker of marriage that the very problem that Jesus defined is revealed — hardness of heart. Can two god-players really refine each other into something better as long as they remain god-players? No. Something has got to give.

Scripture declares Jesus, Yahweh the Son, to be the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Therefore, to those who have been given divine enlightenment that the human Likeness of God condition is hell — and the precursor to an even worse hell — to those, Jesus holds Himself out as the one and only way to regain the Image of God.

The Image of God cannot fully be regained in this life. But, the forgiveness of sins Jesus won for all humanity on this world’s cross is the necessary condition for full restoration to the Image of God in the world to come. That coming world of righteousness is described in Revelation 21 and 22. It’s humanity’s great hope. And in the midst of it is Jesus.

Only Yahweh has the power to release the grip that the Likeness of God has on all of us. And only in the forgiveness of sins won by Jesus is that power expressed. And forgiveness of sins can only be applied to sins we have acknowledged as real sins. But, when this happens the result can be stunning.

For example, last week I also listened to a podcast by an internet influencer named Alana Arbucci. This young lady appears to be in her late twenties. In a video made a year ago, she confessed that she had recently broken up with a man with whom she had lived outside of marriage for six years. In the wake of the breakup, a friend got her interested in a Bible study. 

As a result, Alana has come to several interesting observations. For one, she said, “We’re taught these days that sex doesn’t mean anything. So why does it hurt so bad when someone uses us just for our body?” Good question. The hurt is the judgment that comes upon those who deliberately rebel against Yahweh’s one flesh proclamation. Embracing rebellion has consequences.

Second, in talking to all her friends, Alana noted that many of them were experiencing the same misery under the present system. As she put it, “women are experiencing emotional trauma having sex, hoping there’s a relationship when there is none. Men are also feeling the trauma.” Well. This is what god-playing brings us. Glad someone finally saw hookup culture and living together for the traumatic thing it really is.

Going to Bible study, Alana saw that Scripture predicts the very misery she and her friends were experiencing by being their own gods and rebelling against Yahweh’s plan for sexuality, marriage and the family. She marveled that Scripture could do so.

She also came to this insight: “I think it would be so interesting  to ask your partner what they think of taking sex off the table. Do you think the relationship can survive without it? And, if not, why?” And then, she said that she had made the decision not to have sex again until she was married, until there was real commitment to being one flesh. She expressed great relief knowing that this decision meant that in future relationships she would not allow herself to be sexually used again.

God cannot be mocked. As a result, there seems to be interesting things going on with young people. Will many return to their Creator God through His Savior? If so, we pray we may be able to make disciples of Jesus as He commanded us to do.

Let’s conclude with this. When Jesus pointed out the problem of hardness of heart to the Pharisees, He was also pointing out that a solution is needed. He was also pointing indirectly to Himself. For, as Messiah, He’s the only solution. Amen.

All Bible quotes are from the ESV.