Sermon Transcript

My wedding was the happiest day of my life. I love my children so much, but there was nothing like watching my wife walk down that aisle. She was 19 years old, I was 20. We got married at a very young age; we did things the old-school way. And this truly was the most thrilling day of my life. I did not have a career, we did not have money, we were college students, and yeah, basically all the things that you normally wait for now to get married, we didn’t have any of that.

It was hard. We rented a house on the border of the ghetto in Alexandria, Louisiana. There was a lot of crime nearby where we lived. It was beautiful. It was the greatest day of my life. But ever since no-fault divorce has been entered into American legislation, I think it started in the late 1960s, no-fault divorce caused the divorce rate in our country to double. No-fault divorce means you can go get a divorce without claiming any wrongdoing, if you didn’t know. It’s not that your husband slept around; it’s just, “We’re done, we grew apart.” Once that happened, the divorce rate in America doubled.

Now, it’s gotten even worse since then because now not only has the divorce rate doubled, but now we celebrate divorce. On the rise is this crazy phenomenon called divorce parties. Has anybody heard of this before? This is shocking. Divorce is the death of something that should have represented the most beautiful milestone in your life.

Now, we’re throwing parties to celebrate it, where people are coming together. There’s this online platform called Evite. Evite tracks all of the parties and what’s happening and all that. They said they’ve seen a significant reach. Last year was an all-time high for divorce parties. And this trend, quote, “highlights a shift towards using celebrations to transform life transitions into positive experiences.”

The article is admitting that they’re using celebration to turn something that should be seen as dark and depressing to transform it into a positive thing. It doesn’t matter what you’re doing in their eyes. If you throw a celebration for it, it takes the evil out of the picture. It doesn’t work like that, does it? Unfortunately, we believe that if we have a party, we can make death no longer stink. A 53-year-old woman held a divorce party where she invited more than 30 people to celebrate. And she said, “Filing for divorce is an act of freedom. Why should I not celebrate one of the bravest choices I’ve ever made for myself?” The way we handle marriage and divorce, by and large, is directly related to this idea: What does it have to do for me? We only like to stay married and contribute to things if we think it benefits us. But as Christians, we know that’s not why we do anything in the world, right? Amen? We do everything for Jesus. Amen? Right. Today, Jesus is going to celebrate marriage and reveal what it is truly all about. And then He is going to engage with us, to encourage us, to embrace it, and encourage others to do the same.

And that is why the main point of today’s sermon is: We must cherish and encourage marriage as God originally intended it. So, Church, please rise with me as we read Matthew 19:3–12. This morning, I’m going to be reading from the Christian Standard Bible.

Some Pharisees approached him to test him. They asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife on any grounds?” “Haven’t you read,” he replied, “that he who created them in the beginning made them male and female, and he also said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be joined 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.” “Why then,” they asked him, “did Moses command us to give divorce papers and to send her away?” He told them, “Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because of the hardness of your hearts, but it was not like that from the beginning. I tell you, whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another commits adultery.” His disciples said to him, “If the relationship of a man with his wife is like this, it’s better not to marry.” He responded, “Not everyone can accept this saying, but only those to whom it has been given. For there are eunuchs who were born that way from their mother’s womb, there are eunuchs who were made by men, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves that way because of the kingdom of heaven. The one who is able to accept it should accept it.” (Matthew 19:3–12, CSB)

This is the word of the Lord, Church. You may be seated.

Father, I come to You now in the name of Jesus, and I ask that You would glorify Yourself through this sermon. Lord, I put a lot of heart and sweat into studying these texts this week, and just like every Sunday, I feel ill-equipped to be Your spokesperson. So I’m asking that You would override all of my shortcomings and that You would just speak up for Your people and have them hear Your message, whether it comes out of my mouth that way or not. Jesus, will You please own this service? Will You come and dwell here and let Your glory be seen and felt? In Jesus’ name, amen.

Prelimenary Statements

Okay, so here’s some things that I want you guys to remember. One, what we’re doing here is we are trying to go through all the commands of Christ. Why? Because we know that the purpose of the Church is to go out and make disciples of all nations by baptizing them. And what, Church? Teaching them to obey all that I have commanded you (Matthew 28:19–20), which means that we must have a working knowledge of all that Jesus has commanded us if we intend to make disciples. And so we are going command by command by command until we have covered everything that Jesus has taught us. Now, the command that comes directly from Jesus today is, He says, “Let not man separate what God has brought together” (Matthew 19:6). As a whole, this is all coming from this broader command from Jesus: cherish and encourage marriage exactly the way God designed it in the Garden of Eden.

Now, some of you have gotten divorces, and this sermon is not meant to make anyone feel judged. I’m not here today to tell you that the reason you got divorced was wrong. Hear me. I am not here to tell you that you didn’t try hard enough. I’m not here to tell you that God hates you, that He’s angry with you, and that you don’t belong here. One, every single person in this room is a sinner. Two, every single person in this room needs the blood of Jesus to wash over their sin. Three, every single one of us, if you are married, needs to do a better job. And four, if you’re not yet married, pursue it because it’s a beautiful thing. So, that’s enough of my preliminary statements. Let’s jump into this text, all right? So, nobody’s come into this text or this sermon with this idea of you’re out to get me, right? Amen? We’re here to learn from Jesus. Let’s see what Jesus has to say.

Enjoy Marriage (Matthew 19:3–6)

All right, so the first bullet point, if you’re new here, we follow a handy-dandy little sermon leaflet in the bulletin. You can follow along with that to help understand the flow of thought of the sermon, okay? So, the first thing that I want you guys to recognize is Jesus is calling us to enjoy marriage. Look at verses 3–6. So, who comes to the picture here in verse 3? What we get is that we see the Pharisees are showing up. Every time the Pharisees show up to test Jesus, they are not really interested in whether he gives the right answer. They’re interested in, “Does Jesus agree with me?” So, that’s the first lesson. Never approach Jesus to see if He gives you what you want or if He agrees with you; our relationship with Jesus should solely depend on, “I’m dedicated to do whatever You want me to do.” Amen? That’s right, but that’s not why the Pharisees are here today. They want to see, does Jesus, this guy who is sweeping the nation, agree with us? So, what are they interested in? They’re interested in asking Jesus, “Jesus, can I get a divorce for any reason whatsoever?”

That’s a pretty big statement. There was a time in my life when my marriage really struggled, and by the way, before you get offended, let me just tell you, my wife and I are an open book. She agrees with me that she wants other people to learn from our mistakes in our marriage as well. So, if I say something about how my wife and I struggled in our marriage, one, you shouldn’t be surprised at all because we’re both sinners, but two, she gladly welcomes any kind of statement about our former struggles, okay? So, she’s not in here because she’s taking care of the kids today, but I promise you, she and I are on the same page here. My wife and I, we did struggle, and I’m not going to lie, there was a point in my life where our marriage was struggling so bad that I could have sympathized with the Pharisees on this statement, and yeah, sure, that might really shock you that your pastor is a sinner and that he was in a dark place at one point, but he was, and if you’ve never struggled in your marriage, then I’m just going to call you a liar to your face, right? Marriage is one of the hardest things that humans will ever do. I will tell you, marriage for me was harder than raising kids, but now my son’s 15, so it’s reversed.

All right, so what were some of the things that were going on with the Pharisees? When these Pharisees showed up to test Jesus, you see, they’re stemming from two different types of Jewish theory of first-century Israel. They’re coming with two different types of beliefs. You had two major rabbis, one was Hillel, the other was Shammai, and these two rabbis disagreed on how to interpret what Moses said was right reasons for divorce. You had one that said Moses only permitted divorce in the cases of adultery, and then you had the other guy who was saying that you could get divorced for any reason whatsoever. In fact, those divorces that you could get divorced for, I mean those reasons, let’s say she didn’t age well, you don’t like her moles on her face, “You’re out of here,” or you found someone younger and prettier because you’ve been on earth for 30-plus more years than this other gal that caught his eye, “You’re out of here.” You weren’t physically intimate enough, you didn’t clean the house enough, you didn’t dress the way your husband wanted, or you just spoke too loudly. These are reasons that you see in the Talmud that would have been justified by this particular theory on reasons to get divorced. It doesn’t sound very fair, right?

Well, Jesus, when they are coming up to test Jesus, they’re essentially asking Jesus, “Do You agree with us? Can I divorce my wife for any reason whatsoever?” And they have these reasons in mind. Keep that in mind, Church, because I want you to understand that what we’re doing here today, we are talking about a theory of divorce that relates to a permissive attitude. We are specifically talking about the idea of divorce that you can just get divorced because you don’t like her, okay? That’s the kind of people that Jesus is dealing with today, and so are we. So, when they come to Jesus, they want to know, “Does Jesus agree with us?” And how does Jesus respond? Did He agree with the first group or did He agree with the second group? Does Jesus say, “You’re right, the other group’s right, you can get divorced for adultery”? No, He doesn’t, actually. He denies their question altogether. He doesn’t say He agrees with group A or group B. He says the very fact that you’re asking says that you’ve completely missed the point of marriage.

So, what does He say? In verse 4, this is where we get Jesus’ response. He brings them back to the Garden of Eden. He says, “Haven’t you read?” Of course they’ve read. They’re Pharisees. They’ve memorized the Old Testament, the Hebrew Bible. And what does He do? He cites two verses from the Old Testament. First, He cites Genesis 1:27. He says, “Have you not read? God made them male and female.” For this reason, and then He starts to cite Genesis 2:24. “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.” Jesus says, at that point, there are no longer two different people. Church, hear me. When you get married, you are no longer individuals. You are one unit. Marriage has no place for, “Well, what about me?” When you become one flesh, it always becomes about the unit.

All right, that was a caveat. But Jesus says, He brings it back to the Garden, and He says, “Here, this is the way it was in the Garden. God made you two different genders for a reason. The way He created your physical organs is built for unity. And then you become one flesh, not just spiritually, but physically as well. This is the way God created it. It’s a beautiful thing. You’re asking about divorce. You’re completely missing the beauty that is marriage.”

So, Jesus’ retort, He comes back at them because He’s pointing out, “You’re wanting to separate, and you’re completely missing the fact that God has done a work here. It is God who has brought you two together.” And therefore, when you try to separate it in verse 6, you are destroying God’s work. He says, “Therefore, what God has joined together, let not man separate.” I love this word. So, this is a word that’s used here in Greek. It’s not as common as a lot of other words. So, I didn’t know this word when I came across it. And that’s not surprising. There are thousands of Greek words. But this one word, this one word was really cool. It’s a compound word. And when it says God joined them together, it’s a compound of “together” and “yoke.” So, a yoke is when you have an oxen. I might have to ask Bart to explain this one. But you have oxen, right? And you put the head in the hole, and you’ve got the yoke on the shoulders, and they’re meant to work the field. Well, it says, the Greek word here means that they’re yoked together. God is yoking them together, which means you share a yoke as husband and wife. And it paints this picture that God has purposed you with a mission, and y’all are working on the same mission together. That’s the picture of a beautiful marriage when you were both recognizing, “We are together for a specific purpose. That specific purpose is God-ordained. And that mission is our marriage’s focus, and we will not lose sight of that. Let’s go work the field. Let’s go work the field.” Right? That’s marriage. I love that imagery that my wife and I, we are on mission together. And that mission is from God.

And that means that with this in mind, when we are destroying marriage, and this is Jesus’ rebuke of the Pharisees, when you’re destroying marriage, you’re shattering the yoke. You’re telling God, “I don’t want Your mission,” because the mission is directly tied to your marriage. “I don’t want Your mission. I don’t want to do Your work. I want to worry about me.” That’s the kind of attitude the Pharisees have here when they’re asking, “Can I get divorced for any reason?” Now, the point here is that Jesus wants us to enjoy marriage. He wants you to take a step back and realize, “Now hold up, we’re struggling. We might fight about bills. We might fight because my wife likes to shop too much. We might fight because my husband leaves his hair on the bathroom counter. We might fight because the toilet seat’s always up. The laundry stinks. There’s constant work.” You want to fight, move across the country. There’s great ways to be stressed in all facets of life. But Jesus is saying, if you really look at what God has done here, and take a step back, and look at each other, and realize, “God has put me together with you for a specific purpose to change the world and to do something great.” When you take a step back and you look at what God has done, how He has yoked you together, all of a sudden, hair on the bathroom counter, spending too much at Target, they drift in the wind like chaff because you’re getting a bigger picture of what’s important, right? And that’s what the Pharisees were missing.

The Common Work for Married Couples

So what is the common work? If you’re looking in the bulletin, I want you to fill these two things out. The common work, the shared mission between couples is to preach the gospel visually. The second thing is to multiply disciples. What do I mean by “preach the gospel visually”? Folks, what I’m about to tell you is the one thing that kept my wife and I from getting divorced, and that is Ephesians 5:32–33. What does Paul say? He says that when God created Adam and Eve in the Garden, male and female, and He brought them together, he says in Ephesians 5 that the first marriage represented Christ’s pursuit of the Church. The husband represents Jesus and the wife represents the Church.

That thought radically made me fight for my marriage more than anything in the world. Why? Because while I might struggle loving another sinner, when I look at Christ and what He has done for me, I am motivated to fight until my very dying breath. What I realized is I do love Jesus. I will always love Jesus because He put that in me. His love that He performed or put on display for me on the cross will always garner my allegiance to Him, okay? My biggest fear is that I am caught being a liar, and someone thinks I’m a hypocrite because my actions say, “You don’t really believe that Jesus is the Savior of the world.” That terrifies me. Paul says that marriage is created to be a visual sermon. How a man loves his wife is a reflection of the gospel. Men, if you are not loving your wife the way Christ loves the Church, then that is a visual sermon that says you do not believe that Jesus really died for the Church. That terrified me. For that reason alone, I decided that no matter how unlovable my wife might be, even if she becomes like Gomer, my wife would never—but even if, this is why I had our brother read from Hosea 3, because even if your wife cheats on you time and time again, you know what I’m going to do? I want to represent Christ, and He went after a harlotting, whoring people. We worshipped false gods since the day we were born, and Jesus would not let us go. He fought for you tooth and nail to His very dying breath, and we were prostitutes with false gods. So no matter what my wife does, even if it kills me, I’m going to pursue her. Why? Because I believe that how I treat my wife is directly related to how I believe Jesus pursued me. That’s a biblical marriage.

Husbands, I’m looking at you. The onus is on you. You represent Christ. You have a far greater responsibility to preach this sermon visually than your wives do. Yes, husbands, I will tell you, I will break all the social norms of what’s accepted in society and say, men are the head of the household. But I will also remind you, that means you are to die to yourself, and the onus of this visual sermon is far greater on you than it is on your wife, because you represent Jesus. So we enjoy marriage, and we enjoy marriage as we recognize that we have a mission from God first to preach a visual sermon.

And wives, I want to tell you, you have to submit to your husband. Now, husbands, be someone that’s submittable to, okay? Ephesians 5 makes that clear. But wives, you have to submit to your husband’s leadership. Why? Because in the visual sermon, it says that you really believe that the Church is meant to serve Christ. Does that make sense? Both spouses play a role in this visual sermon. I’m telling you, the marriage tells you far more about whether someone believes the gospel than anything else.

I attended an event once where it was intended to gather all the pastors in the area, and they were trying to raise money for missions. And this husband was doing great. I mean, he was writing a check, making a donation. I don’t want to name the ministry, because if I say the ministry, you might figure it out. But we were at this thing, and this guy was writing a check to make a donation. It was time to take donations, and he was smiling, saying amen, and praising the Lord. And the wife was just sitting there, rolling her eyes, and mocked him, saying, “He always does this.” And we’re sitting at a table, and my wife and I are just like, “I can’t believe this.” She was just cutting him every step. And it broke my heart, because I only saw this man trying to serve the Lord, and it destroyed the witness of their marriage. Maybe that man is like a terrible husband at home, and that’s why she was like that in public. I don’t know. All I know is that what was supposed to be a beautiful image of these two fighting for missions around the world stole glory from Jesus. Your marriages are incredibly important because that is how you exalt the Lord. And when one of you is not performing well, you’re not making yourself look bad. You’re making Jesus look bad. Okay? All right. That was the end of the free bit.

So, the second thing I want to point out to you, the second mission that we are called to, in your bulletin, is we are called to be fruitful and multiply. Remember, it says, the common work for married couples is to visually preach the gospel and to multiply disciples. I know there are people who have tried to have kids, and they could not. Okay? Malachi 2:15, write that in the side. You can go home and look at it at home. Malachi 2:15 says that the purpose, another purpose, God created marriage was so that couples could have godly offspring. And this goes back to the Garden in Genesis 1. We talked about this on making disciples on Wednesday night, that the reason God made Adam and Eve is because He intended for them to be fruitful and multiply. And this all ties back to the great commission: “Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations” (Matthew 28:19). So, if you are a married couple who is unable to have kids, you can still multiply disciples. You just do it with other people’s kids.

And do you know, 80% of all incarcerated criminals come from a fatherless home? Do you understand, people, that that means that there’s a very large group of people for men to just be a good mentor to and be in their life? I mean, there’s a ton of children that do not have parental examples who are trying to point people the way of God.

I love Ms. Alice Alford. I hope everyone has had the opportunity to meet Ms. Alice. She is one of our shut-ins. She’s stuck at home. Ms. Alice tells me these glory stories of the days her and her husband used to just round up all the kids on the church bus and bring them to church. They never could have kids, so they had 30 of them instead. And every week, they would go pick them up, and the people in the neighborhood came to trust Ms. Alice and her husband, Junior. They came to trust Junior so much that they started handing their babies over. All the kids in the neighborhood, because of Junior and Alice, they knew that the great work that they were doing. And Junior and Ms. Alice, they would just bring them to go get food after church. They treated them as their own children. That is the image of marriage as God intended it in the Garden. You preach a visual sermon, and you multiply disciples.

Preserve Marriage (Matthew 19:7–9)

Preserve marriage is the next point. Verses 7–9. The Pharisees, they come back to Jesus, and they say, “Okay, Jesus, if You’re so smart, if we aren’t supposed to get divorced, then why in the world did Moses tell us that we could get divorced?” What they’re referring to is Deuteronomy 24:1–4. And in that passage, Moses says, “If any man finds something that is undesirable about his wife,” well, actually, the Hebrew word there is up for debate. But most scholars believe it refers to anything that has to do with unchastity. King James readers probably know what this means. For those of us who were born 500 years later, erwat means basically that you’re doing anything that is illicit sexually. So it goes beyond adultery. It could be pedophilia, heavy porn use, cross-dressing, you name it. And Moses says, “If you discover something about your wife that is unchaste about her, then you write her, and if you write her a certificate of divorce, and she leaves you and marries another man, just know that she cannot come back to you, and you remarry her.” He says that this would defile the land. So this is what the Pharisees have in mind when they come back to Jesus, and they say, “Well, if we’re not supposed to get divorce, then why did Moses write us the command?” And so Jesus actually says, you would think that Jesus would at this point, He would go, “Well, the command was given,” but Jesus doesn’t say the command. He says the permission. He says, “Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because of the hardness of your hearts” (Matthew 19:8).

Which means, folks, it’s not a requirement, even in cases of adultery. Nobody says you have to go get a divorce just because they did something wrong. So let that be said, right, because I’ve seen too many people pull the trigger way too quickly, even in cases of adultery, as though none of us have looked at another person with lustful intent, right, which we’ve already talked about. Jesus says everybody is committed to adultery because adultery begins in the heart, right (Matthew 5:28)? So just remember that. So anyway, Jesus is saying that Moses permitted it.

Divorce Exists Because of Sinful Hearts

And three things that I want you to remember. Jesus says divorce exists because of a sinful heart. That’s in the bulletin. So what Moses is giving is, he’s not actually giving the command, he’s giving a regulation. He’s saying if you’re going to get divorced and send her on her way, you need to know that she cannot come back to you once she’s remarried. Keil and Delitzsch, a couple of Old Testament scholars who lived over a hundred years ago, brought up some good points, and they said that this regulation of divorce by Moses was being done so that people would not pull the trigger a little bit too quickly. The point is that Moses started regulating divorce to slow the bleeding. You were getting divorced because you didn’t like your wife’s mole or she burned your meal. So Moses says, “I’ve got to do something that’s going to make this go a little bit slower, and I’m going to tell them that if you, woman, you keep that up, you’re going to be signing papers in the morning.” He’s putting the brakes on that kind of behavior and attitude. If people know that their wife will not be allowed to return to them after getting divorced and remarried, maybe people will embrace divorce a little bit more slowly.

The other thing that I want you to recognize is that He changes their language from command. They thought it was a command, “Oh, I got to get a divorce if I see anything unchaste about my wife,” but then He also says, He brings it back to the Garden, and He says, “So even though you have Moses, even though Moses permits it, He wants them to understand that this was not this way in the Garden.” That’s the priority for Jesus, and it must be that priority for us. We must prioritize and pursue the kind of marriage that God designed in the Garden of Eden before man first sinned.

And so it’s all about sinful hearts. That should radically wake us up. The fact that we’re even interested in divorce at all is an indictment against our sinful nature. Because, like I said before, if you understand that marriage is a visual sermon between man and wife and you still want to get a divorce, there are many caveats, I know, right? Abandonment, abuse, rampant immorality. There are many cases, I’m not saying that you should never get a divorce, but in most cases when people are wanting to get a divorce, it is because they are forgetting that marriage was meant to be a picture of Christ’s pursuit of the Church. That’s why Jesus says that Moses gave you this permission because of your hard hearts. It directly reflected their sinful attitudes.

Divorce Is Inseparable from Adultery

All right, the big one is that Jesus gives another response, and this is in verse 9. The second part of Jesus’s response is that, remember this, Church, divorce is inseparable from adultery. So let’s read verse 9. “Whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, they commit adultery.” A lot of people read this and they think that this is the exception as to when they can get divorced. This is not the exception as to when you can get divorced; this is the exception as to when you can get remarried and not commit adultery. So, in other words, Jesus is saying that all divorces lead to adultery except where adultery led to the divorce. Let me say that again. All divorces lead to adultery except where adultery led to the divorce. Why is that? That is because when we get divorces, it doesn’t matter if you sign a divorce certificate and hand it to them, that marriage is still standing in the eyes of God. That’s how you can get a divorce, get remarried, and God says you just committed adultery because the piece of paper means nothing to Him. The only time Jesus says that you can actually get a divorce and not be considered an adulterer for remarriage is when you have the divorce certificate and adultery has taken place. That’s the only thing that truly dissolves the marriage, but even then I would still encourage you that if your spouse cheats on you to remember that you cheated on Christ first, and to fight for that marriage regardless.

All right. Here’s the, look, you’ll never hear me quote The Message, the Bible translation of The Message, but they knocked this one out of the park. This is what he says for Matthew 5:32:

If you divorce your wife, you’re responsible for making her an adulteress unless she has already made herself that by sexual promiscuity.

Couldn’t have said it better myself.

Encourage Marriage (Matthew 19:10–12)

The last point is encourage marriage. Jesus says in verses 10–12, we see His disciples come to Him, and they’re freaking out. Like, “Jesus, this statement is so heavy-handed, we’re better to just stay single.” And Jesus says, “You know what, let’s look at the eunuch for a second.” If you don’t know, a eunuch is somebody who has removed their organs downstairs to remove any sexual desire. Okay. Jesus says you’ve got three different types of eunuchs. He says, “You got some that are born that way, then you got some that are made that way by man.” Like if you became one of the harem’s bodyguards of a king, right? They want to make sure that you’re going to keep your hands off the harem. So you’ve got some that are born that way, some that are made that way by men, and then there are some that choose to be that way for the kingdom of heaven. And He tells you, “This is only a good idea if it is given to you by God.” In other words, not everybody can be single and live a life of celibacy. He says, “But if you are able to do it, it’s a good thing. If God has given you that gift, it is a good thing.”

Folks, I need to make sure you understand that in the age where we are putting off marriage for affluence, looking at you, young men, we cannot be putting marriage off until we think we have arrived financially. When did God give Adam a wife? Almost immediately after he was born. He grew into adulthood and maturity with a wife. Why? “It is not good for man to be alone,” it says in Genesis 2:18. It is not good for man to be alone. He should be married. Folks, we are created to be married. Let that sink in. The exception to the rule is those few who are gifted by God to be single. But by and large, that means the majority of us are called and created to be married.

So my question for you is, we should be asking, I mean, my charge for you is that we shouldn’t be asking, “Why should I get married?” The real question is, “Why shouldn’t I?” And money, affluence, and career is not a good reason. It’s okay to be poor and be married, by the way. Because if you are going to struggle single, why not struggle with a partner?

All right. We are humans, and we were designed for marriage. So Jesus, at this point, I want you guys to understand, He is calling all of us, not just the Pharisees, calling all of us to step back, look at marriage, and say, “This is a good and beautiful thing. God has brought us together. We have a shared mission, a shared purpose. We are yoked together to change the world by making disciples and preaching a visual sermon.”

So let’s take our celebration of divorces and throw it in the trash. Amen? All right. And let’s encourage our young people to get married. And if you’ve got grandchildren and children, tell them, “Don’t be afraid to get married young,” but also show them what a real marriage looks like.

Let’s go to the Lord. Father, I thank You so much for Your grace and Your love. I pray that You please bless us and that You help us to cherish marriage as You truly intended it to be cherished. Thank You, Father, that we can be here together today as Your people and use us for Your glory. Amen. All right. We’re going to do it.