Grace of God in Relationship to Divorce and Remarriage

Introduction: The Background and Scope of the Sermon

0:01 This sermon was preached on Sunday evening, December 14th, 1986, at the Trinity Baptist Church in Montville, New Jersey.

0:11 Now those of you who were with us this morning will at least have some inkling of what it is that I will be addressing tonight from the Word of God. And if I were to give a title to our topical study this evening, I believe the most appropriate title would be, The Grace of God in Relationship to the Tragedy of Divorce and Remarriage. The Grace of God in Relationship to the Tragedy of Divorce and Remarriage. Now there is a background to this topical study.

0:55 Most of you know what that background is, but looking out over the congregation, I see at least several who, to my knowledge, are not. Most of you, to my knowledge, were not with us this morning, and possibly not last Lord's Day morning. And so for your sake, in particular, let me put tonight's message in its proper setting. In the course of our consecutive expositions through the Book of Mark, we came two Lord's Days ago to the 10th chapter of Mark, which after a general word of introduction with respect to the particular place of our Lord's Day, we came to the 10th chapter of Mark.

1:32 We came to the 10th chapter of Mark, which after a general word of introduction with respect to the particular place of our Lord's Day, we came to the 10th chapter of Mark. The Lord's ministry at this point in his life is taken up in verses 2 through 12 with the subject of marriage, divorce, and remarriage. And in the opening up of the passage, we considered the question of the Pharisees, as it is recorded in Mark 10 and verse 2, an insincere and an entrapping question, and then we saw the devastating question of the Pharisees. And then we saw the devastating response of our Lord in verses 3 through 9.

2:07 And then this morning, I sought to expound the private question of the disciples, as recorded in verse 10, and then the private answer of our Lord, as given in verses 11 and 12. But having done that, I then went on to complete the testimony of Scripture with regard to this delicate question of divorce. And divorce and remarriage, by setting before you the fact that in this private answer of our Lord, recorded in Mark 10, verses 11 and 12, we have set forth what I call the general normative regulation. And with respect to the subject of marriage, divorce, and remarriage, the general normative regulation of the Word of God is this. Whosoever shall put away his wife and marry another commits adultery against her. And if she herself shall put away her husband and marry another, she commits adultery. Whenever there is an unwarranted disruption of a marriage, followed by the establishment of a second marriage, there is, according to the Word of our Lord Jesus, a committing adultery.

3:32 This is in fact a direct reflection of the sin of adultery. But then I rounded out this teaching by noting with you that in Matthew 19, 6, and there is a parallel passage in Matthew 5 as well, I deliberately did not turn to it. The case rests squarely on the clearer passage in Matthew 19, 6, that not only does our Lord give a general normative regulation, but He also… gives a painful exceptive permission whoso puts away his wife except for pornea any form of illicit sexual intercourse and marries another commits adultery but the painful exceptive permission is clearly taught by our Lord just as clear as his general normative regulation and then we noted in 1 Corinthians 7 15 the third strand of the overall biblical teaching under the new covenant the additional apostolic injunction and that injunction is that if an unbelieving partner is not pleased to dwell with his or her believing spouse and is determined to break up the marriage the apostolic injunction is

4:59 let him go let him go let him go through with the disruption of that marriage the believer the brother the sister is not bound in such cases they are freed from that marriage bond free to marry only in the Lord and then in conclusion I sought to focus upon two very vital principles by way of application number one that all of our thought and conduct concerning marriage must be dominated by the perspective of its original institution when the Pharisees are concerned about divorce legislative procedure Jesus takes them back to the original institution of marriage itself and therefore he teaches us that all of our thinking and all of our conduct concerning the institution of marriage should be dominated by the perspectives of Eden and then the second line of application I brought was this that all of our thought and conduct concerning divorce and remarriage must be dominated by the perspectives of the full teaching of our Lord and His apostle and in that full

6:28 teaching there is a provision that is much greater for us that will lead us to this visão of provision for the dissolving of a marriage in the case of porneia. There is not a command to dissolve the marriage, but there is a gracious permission granted. And then according to 1 Corinthians 7.15, there is an apostolic mandate to allow the dissolving of the marriage in the case of the unbelieving spouse determined to bring the marriage to an end. Now in the light of that principle, that all of our thought and conduct concerning divorce and remarriage must be dominated by the perspectives of the full teaching of our Lord and His Apostle, we will recognize on the one hand the realism of grace in making these provisions for the reality of men's still remaining hardness of heart, but we are prohibited from seeking out other kinds of spurious ways to avoid the dissolving of the marriage bond. People bring up such questions.

The Limits of Grace: Resisting Spurious Grounds for Divorce

7:46 What should a wife do if the husband who's a hemophiliac with no moral culpability contracts AIDS? Must she? Does she continue to be bound to a man terminally afflicted with AIDS and perhaps voluntarily forgoes sexual relations or have to be unusually precautious in those relations? Now everything within us feels the trauma of that tragedy, but vows were taken for better for worse. In sickness and in health, someone brings up the question, what about the person afflicted with a terminal illness that keeps them hospitalized for years? What about the person who is clinically brain dead but kept alive on a respirator? Is not legally dead and buried? Is a husband or wife bound in that relationship? And as much as everything

8:49 within us would desire to find some kind of justifiable casuistry to say, yes, the person is released from the marriage bond, we dare not go beyond the word of God? And you see, one of the problems with that pressure to find other causes is the hedonistic spirit of our day that fails to realize there is something more important than an idyllic marriage. God is preparing character. He is committed to make us like Christ. And often the great crucible in which He comes is a meeting point. They use the word marriage the wrong way. carries on that task is the crucible of difficulty, of tribulation that works patience, of sustained and unusual trials, which become the very theater in which God displays His marvelous grace. And it is at this point, though I seldom publicly engage in warning about a book, I feel constrained to warn the Christian public about the book by Dwight Harvey Small, Remarriage and God's Renewing Grace, for the simple reason that in many places, on many occasions, and in the premarital counseling

10:09 tapes, I have been enthusiastic in recommending the first book that Dwight Small produced called Design for Christian Marriage, a book no longer in print, but according to his own confession in the opening words of this book, He has moved in his thinking, he has moved drastically in his thinking since producing that book many years ago. And though this has many helpful things in it, and a discerning, well-grounded servant of Christ can read it with profit as I have done, for the general Christian public it is a dangerous book because it relegates the things I've preached today either to some idealistic kingdom ethics, in the so-called kingdom age to come, in the millennium, and leaves us with nothing but situational ethics for the norms of the present age, or it opens the door for seeking and justifying divorce on many grounds not warranted by the scriptures. But, but, in spite of the clear teaching of the Word of God,

The Church's Response to Fractured Marriages: A Call for Grace, Not Legalism

11:26 in spite of what will increasingly be true in our churches of a careful, spirit anointed proclamation of the sanctity of the marriage bond, the implications of its permanence, marriages are fractured, marriages will be fractured. Furthermore, in the light of the raw, undeniable statistics of what happens with marriages in general in the world, we are told that 45% of the marriages being contracted these days are ending up in divorce, and 55% of second marriages are ending up in divorce. Now, if we or any other congregation has an aggressive God-owned ministry of evangelism, pray tell what kind of people are going to get saved. Real sinners or nice, polite, wonderfully preserved sinners? Well, hopefully God is going to save from the ranks of our own families.

12:38 Many of our children whom I trust because of the kind of stable homes out of which they have come, and the kind of instruction they've received in home and in school and in the assembly of God's people. We'll be preserved from those horrible statistics, but if we are being used of God to reach our generation as it is, we are going to find more and more of those whom the Lord graciously saves will come to us with the baggage of fractured marriages as part and parcel of their past experience. And what are we to say to them? You must be forever relegated. To second-class citizens in the kingdom, we will only accept you in this church if you undergo a branding ceremony. When we baptize people, those who've had no divorce and remarriage in their

13:38 past will go directly from the baptismal tank back to the robing room and mingle with God's people. All who've had divorce and remarriage in their past must go into the kitchen where we have a poker that is heated. And we have a brand, and we will press it on their forehead, and it has a D slash R, divorced and remarried, and we will brand you in your forehead so that the rest of your days you will sit among us, so that everyone looking upon you will know you're a divorced and a remarried person. You may be part of God's people, but marked until you get your glorified body. Is that what we must do? Well, some places do that. I had a dear woman tell me, this morning, that she knew of a precious Christian couple who had a divorce and a remarriage in their past, and they could not find one church in a large metropolitan area that would receive them into membership. And they had to be spiritual vagabonds because of their past sin. Dear people, we have got to think biblically on this question. How does the grace

14:56 of God meet those who are not in the church? How does the grace of God meet those who are not in the church? How does the grace of God meet those who are not in the church? How does the grace of God meet those who come into the orbit of God's grace on his time schedule? And remember, every Christian gets saved right on schedule. And if God has allowed divorce and remarriage to mar those lives before the appointment to arrest them in grace, what do we do with those who God has thus saved in those circumstances? And since the Bible says, records the tragic lapses into sins of a marital nature in the Bible. Among those who know the grace of God, what are we to do with those who, having been brought into the orbit of grace

The Sin of Unwarranted Divorce and Remarriage is Not Unpardonable

15:47 through the subtlety of the devil, through the pressure of the world and their own sin and perversity, fall into the sins of unwarranted divorces and adulterous marriages? What in the world does the grace of God say to them? What does it do for them? Well, you see the concern now, do you? And I say very frankly, the reason I'm preaching tonight is I could not go off on my vacation and know that some of you might be left with an open womb for three weeks until I could... address the subject, and that's why I'm preaching tonight. Point number one, as we consider the grace of God in relationship to the tragedy of divorce, the sin of breaking a marriage on unscriptural grounds and contracting another marriage is not an unpardonable sin. The sin of breaking a marriage on unscriptural grounds and contracting another marriage is not

17:05 an unpardonable sin. Now, to break or put asunder what God has joined is sin. It is a heinous sin. It is a sin of defiance against the Word and the institution of God.

17:25 And therefore, God says in Malachi 2 that He hates putting away. That is, He hates the sin of divorce. God has a hatred for this sin. And in the second chapter of the book of Malachi, God focuses upon some of those sins. The heading in the American Standard is, conjugal sins condemned. God hates this. God speaks of His people dealing treacherously, and there comes to a climactic statement in verse 16, for I hate putting away, says the Lord, the God of Israel, and Him that covers His garment with violence. God hates the act of putting away a wife.

18:26 To contract another marriage under such circumstances is to be guilty of the sin of adultery. We must not water down the words of our Lord, who so puts away His wife, that is, without divine warrant, and marries another, commits adultery. He that puts one away leaves that individual liable to the sin of adultery, for they will then contract another marriage. And we must not water down that sin of adultery.

18:56 This is an ugly, terrible reality. But now the question is, what happens to the person who has violated the law of God in this area, who has broken the standard of God? Is this sin of breaking a marriage on unscriptural grounds and contracting another marriage an unpardonable sin? Well, not according to the Scriptures, for we read in the third chapter of Mark's Gospel what the unpardonable sin is. Our Lord has been casting out demons.

19:35 The Pharisees have come and said, We do not deny that demons are being cast out, but, I'm sorry, Mark says the scribes, verse 22, He's doing it in league with the devil. Demons are cast out. Christ says it is the power of God working in Him and through Him. They say, No, it's the power of the devil.

19:57 And then our Lord says in verse 28, All their sins shall be forgiven unto the sons of men, and their blasphemies wherewithsoever they shall blaspheme. But whosoever shall blaspheme against the Holy Spirit hath never forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin because they said he has an unclean spirit. You see, in people's curiosity about the unpardonable sin, precisely what it is and who committed it then and can it be committed today, they miss one of the most wonderful, sweeping, broad promises of forgiveness found anywhere in the Word of God. Did you catch it at the beginning?

20:41 Verse 28, Verily I say unto you, All their sins shall be forgiven unto the sons of men, and their blasphemies wherewithsoever they shall blaspheme. All sins shall be forgiven. All blasphemies shall be forgiven. There is but one exception, and the exception to that sin is not the obtaining of a divorce on unwarranted grounds and the contracting of an unlawful divorce.

21:24 It is an adulterous marriage. Now, if we say the Word of God is the sufficient and only rule of faith and practice, then we must dare to assert without any reservation that this sin or these often found together twin sins are in no sense to be construed as unpardonable sins. We are told expressly by our Lord, All their sins shall be forgiven unto the sons of men, when any sinner coming laden with any sin to the way of God's one appointment for the forgiveness of sin finds himself before the fountain open for sin and uncleanness and cries in the language of Psalm 51, Wash me, cleanse me. He will never find God saying, I'm sorry. The virtue of the blood of my Son extends to every sin, but the sin of disrupting a marriage and contracting another and an adulterous marriage. No, my Bible says in 1 John 1, 7, The blood of Jesus Christ, God's Son, cleanseth us from all sin.

22:51 If we confess, If we confess, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. These things I write unto you that you may not sin, but if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ, the righteous one. And He is propitiation for our sin and not for ours only, but also for the good of others. The sin of the whole world.

Biblical Examples of Forgiveness for Marital Sins

23:26 And therefore I say to any who sit among us tonight, whose hearts feel the grief and pain of having dishonored God, not only in a thousand other ways, but in the whole area of the institution of marriage, you need not go half-bent all your days thinking that somehow or another this sin is only partially cleansed, only partially forgiven, only partially taken within the advocacy of Jesus Christ. Granted, you will carry to your graves varying degrees of the pain and the grief of that disruption. You will bear some of the inevitable consequences of the sin. But my dear Christian brother or sister, you need not spend a month, a millisecond under the oppressive guilt of that sin as though it were not fully and completely forgiven in the virtue of the blood and righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ. Listen to the language of the Apostle with respect to this sin and others before conversion.

24:47 1 Corinthians chapter 6. 1 Corinthians chapter 6. 1 Corinthians chapter 6. Verse 9.

24:59 Do you not know that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived, neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with men, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners shall inherit the kingdom of God. What a bunch! He says, now people living in that kind of lifestyle with all of these various sexual perversions marking their manner of life, those that are utterly indifferent to the right of property and to self-control, those whose tongues become a veritable lash and machine-gun with which they whip and slay people, revilers, he says, such people shall not inherit the kingdom of God, but now they shall inherit the kingdom of God. But now notice. Such were some of you. Such were some of you.

26:05 He doesn't talk about Christian revilers. He doesn't talk about Christian thieves. He doesn't talk about Christian fornicators or idolaters or Christian homosexuals. He says, you were that, but what are you now?

26:25 You were washed. You were sanctified. You were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God. And there standing before God in Christ, based on the work of Christ and by the ministry of the Spirit is the standing of all believers cleansed, washed, sanctified, justified.

26:54 And we stand on the level ground of Golgotha. We stand on the level ground of God's courtroom where the sentence of an imputed righteousness goes forth. We stand on the level ground of God's cleansing fuller's shop where He washes and purges all who come to Him. And there's not a shred of evidence that those who had adultery and homosexuality and other sexual and marital perversions, growing out of them, are somehow put in an anteroom, a little bit short of fully washed, sanctified or set apart unto God in Jesus Christ. And though I know it has application to another passage, the principle is the same, what God has called clean call not thou unclean. And we have beautiful examples of this in the ministry of our Lord. In John 8, the woman taken in adultery but more particularly and more germane.

28:10 John chapter 4, here was a woman who before her conversion had a messed up marital past. The Lord Jesus, fully knowing her condition, present and past, offers Himself to her as the water of life with no conditions. Notice that. He said, If you knew who it was who was speaking to you you would have asked of Him and He would have given unto you.

28:43 You woman that I know completely, all of your sordid past marital experiences and your present immoral relationship, I would give you the water of life. And she said, Lord give me this water. And Jesus said in verse 16, Go call your husband and come hither. And the woman said, I have no husband.

29:07 They said, I have no husband. Jesus said unto her, You have well said I have no husband, for you have had five husbands. He whom you now have, is not your husband. You have said truly.

29:20 Then what did Jesus do? Sit her down and lay out a whole bunch of rules how she was supposed to go back and find the first man she lived with and to prove that she was truly penitent and believing, sort out all that marital mess and get that all fixed up and then she would be all right. No. He was prepared to take her right.

29:36 right where she was all he was doing was drawing forth from her the acknowledgement that if she was to drink of the water of life she had to own the reality of her sin up to that present moment and owning that sin find forgiveness and pardon and that satisfaction of soul in christ as the water of life that she couldn't find in all the bed hopping she'd done over the years ah but you say what about someone after conversion what about the sin of disrupting a marriage marital abnormalities contracting marriages in adultery does god forgive those sins in a believer well the classic example of god's answer is david with bathsheba you what marriage could have been or what relationship could have been established in a more sordid context at its beginning david looks out upon his rooftop in the evening and in raw lust burns towards bathsheba as far as we know knew nothing about her he had to find out who she was it was purely a case of a man being drawn by law raw unbridled lust to an

31:04 unknown commodity what a beginning and she's brought in past three hundred four hundred using the influence of his position and no doubt his expertise for david in that sense i'd say shane philly was a woman's man god had said that the king shall not multiply wives you had at least six of them in violation but judah romney seventeen in verse seventy but b doubt it it may the scripture tells us they were sexual intercourse was a result you consider a trials adultery she becomes pregnant david wants to cover his tracks so he plots the murder of her husband think of this he wants release from her marriage bond by murder and he gets what he wants

31:48 now you talk about a believer starting a marriage relationship in a sordid context it can't get much worse than that it begins with adultery inflamed by raw lust now no adultery is justifiable but it's at least a little more understandable when the path leading into it is someone who's got a deep ache for companionship and that companionship is met in someone other than his or her wife which is why you must beware of allowing emotional affinity with someone other than your wife or husband it can be the first step to adultery but in david's case it wasn't even that it was raw lust burning to a woman bathing on a housetop that's how it began and then it gets more sordid when he uses murder to try to cover up his tracks and i'm not even going into the details in between how he brings back that noble man from the front of the battle tries to get him to go in and spend a night or two with his wife to cover his tracks prepared to run the risk that people would look at the little boy or girl as he grew and say he looks more like king david than uriah he was willing for all of that what a sordid story i don't even like to tell the whole thing

33:07 did you know what god did when that man was brought to own his sin approximately a year later in second samuel 12 david said i've sinned against the lord you know what the prophet said the lord has put away your sin just that quickly i have sinned the lord has put away thy sin there were temporal chastisements there were tragic results that followed david to his grave but here's the issue it was not an unpardonable sin that sin was forgiven that sin was cleansed and hear me now that marriage started in such a sordid ungodly context is so sanctified of god that the product of that union not that child that child died but the later product of that union was solomon who is brought into 이후 at that time followed byert and delivered he then moved in the year after his nadzieję was established and moved back to man's life and those living there for into the very line of Jesus Christ. And Almighty God, in giving the lineage of His own dear Son as to His earthly existence, is not ashamed to have Matthew 1 and verse 6 in the Bible. Jesse begat David the king, and David begat Solomon of her

34:34 that had been the wife of Uriah. Now, my friends, if you're my fastidious and God, you've got the heart of a Pharisee. And God is not ashamed to say, I bring my Son in a line that includes a marriage begun in such sordid, rotten, filthy circumstances.

35:06 But it becomes the sanctified channel for the bringing of His own dear Son. Dear and beloved Son.

The Church Must Forgive as God Forgives

35:18 And it's at this point that I want to read from J. Adams' very helpful book, Marriage, Divorce, and Remarriage in the Bible. And Mr. Adams says some very strong things in his introduction about Dwight Small's perspectives as well of a negative nature.

35:37 But listen to Dr. Adams as he addresses this issue. It is clear that God forgives murder, sexual immorality, of the basest sort. The church must do so also.

35:51 And it's important to note that forgiveness, even in the case of a repentant believer who sinned after conversion, involves not only cleansing, but comfort and restoration to full fellowship among the members of Christ's church. And then he refers to 2 Corinthians 2, 7 and 8 about how the church was to treat a man who had been involved in an incestuous relationship but had come to repentance.

36:19 Somehow or other, adultery and divorce for unbiblical reasons seem to be omitted from today's accepted list of forgivable sins, even though God forgave them. That's a tragic mistake. To omit such sins is to defile the human heritage of Jesus Christ himself. By that I mean to say that in the line of Christ one finds Rahab the harlot, an adulterer, married Salmon and enters the church, the line of the Messiah.

36:47 David and Bathsheba plainly committed adultery, not to speak of David's murder, and Jesus is called the son of David. Was the union of David and Bathsheba from which Christ came adulterous? Or was it sanctified by forgiveness? We must not be more pious than Paul or God himself, who among us is not sin.

37:11 What reader of these pages, what listener to my words, is not an adulterer, an adulterer and a murderer in his heart? Who is to cast the first stone? Are you better than Rahab, David or Bathsheba in God's sight because you've not outwardly committed adultery as they did or because you've not entered into marriage with an unbiblically divorced person and by that committed an act of adultery? Why have adultery and divorce been singled out from among the list of heinous sins recorded in the New Testament?

37:43 And he has a footnote. Sinful divorce, doesn't even appear among the items on the list principally setting forth sin in categories. Matthew 15, Romans 1, Galatians 5, 2 Timothy 3, Revelation 21, 22. Yet, greed, slander and lying are in that list.

38:02 I'm not trying to minimize the sinfulness of divorce on unbiblical grounds. It is heinous and its consequences are tragic. But if we are to view it in some special light as so many of us are in it, as so many present-day Christians do, how is it that the Bible does not do so? Would it not have appeared at or near the head of every such list of abominations if the New Testament viewed sinful divorce as many do?

38:31 We must say, therefore, that what God has cleansed no man must call unclean. Christ is bigger than our sin, even the sin of adultery and divorce. We minimize Christ when we speak and act if this were not so. These sins are truly heinous.

38:50 We must not minimize that fact either. But Christ is greater than sin, all sin. We do not minimize sin or its effects, but we always maximize Christ and the power of His grace to forgive. So I say to any individual sitting among us who for one reason or another has carried sin, some degree of an unrelieved burden of guilt, if you have come and owned your sin as sin, you have swept away excuses and telling God about all the extenuating circumstances, and you are looking to God's appointed way of forgiveness through the bloodletting of the Son of God, trusting only in what He did in His vicarious curse-bearing, trusting what He confers on the basis of His perfect life, my friend, you need go with no weight of unrelieved guilt any longer. It is unbelief to do so. May God enable you to leave fully conscious of what you are, washed, sanctified, justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of God.

40:16 And what I say to you individuals, I say to this church, oh, may God help us to be a haven for those who come among us with the scars and the wounds and the twisted psychological and emotional joints of horrible marital experiences not to tighten the thumb screws on their already aching fingers, but to speak to them, in the word of liberating grace and pardon, all manner of sins and blasphemy shall be forgiven you.

40:59 Neither do I condemn thee, says Jesus. Go and sin no more.

Repentance Does Not Require Disrupting a Subsequent Marriage

41:08 But then the second thing I want to say is this. Having asserted that divorce on unscriptural grounds and remarriage that is adulterous are not unpardonable, are not unpardonable, are not unpardonable, are not unpardonable sins, I want to say this. Repentance and restitution for the sins of unwarranted divorce and remarriage does not involve the disruption of another marriage.

41:38 Repentance and restitution for the sins of unwarranted divorce and remarriage does not involve the disruption of another marriage. Now here we do not have as much in the way of explicit biblical data as we do with the Bible. But we do have such statements as are found in 1 Corinthians chapter 7. And it's the great principle that as the grace of God finds us, the grace of God takes us, and the grace of God ministers to us.

42:17 And may I say it reverently, even grace can't unscramble an egg.

42:24 I mean, once you've mixed the yolk and the white,

42:29 you can't unscramble it. A scrambled egg is a scrambled egg. And in some areas, restitution can be made. If you have wrongfully taken money, as Zacchaeus did.

42:41 Behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor. If I've taken anything wrongfully, I restore it fourfold. Restitution was possible. The means were at his disposal.

42:53 And if not, he was prepared to do what he had to do to get the means. But he could make restitution in the way, of financial remuneration. But what is a person to do, who in their sinful past, has fractured a marriage, contracted another marriage? Now then, the partners have gone to the four winds.

43:13 Perhaps themselves have contracted other marriages. And now God's grace meets them. What is repentance and restitution for them? Is it going back and tracking down the first person, demanding that they break their marriage, and, my friends, there is no indication that the Word of God makes such demands upon people.

43:35 The grace of God meets us where we are, and ministers to us as we are. And the great principle that Pastor Nichols articulated in another connection this morning, 1 Corinthians 7.24, Brethren, let each man wherein he was called, that is effectually called by the gospel into the grace of Christ, therein abide, and here's the new dimension, with God. Let each man wherein he was called, therein abide with God.

44:12 And when God in grace arrests a man, often a man and a woman, whose relationship was entered upon in sinful circumstances, God's grace cleanses and pardons and renews and washes and in the state in which God effectually called them, let them begin to abide with God under the canopy of His glorious forgiveness and in the power of His Spirit, see a marriage constructed by the renewing grace of God that will be a monument of His transforming power. And there is even a suggestion, some would say more than a suggestion, further on in the passage where Paul says, he's giving general advice starting in verse 25 to virgins, he said, I have no express warrant to give a word from the Lord, that is, I have no previous revelation, I have no certain commandment, but I give sanctified apostolic counsel. He said, in the light of this present distress that is upon us, whatever that was, verse 26, it will be, it's better, he says, that a man be as he is. Verse 27, are you bound unto a wife? Seek not to be loosed.

45:37 And that verb loosed means, get rid of her, divorce her. Are you bound to a wife? Even though in the present distress that will bring certain hardships, do not seek to be loosed. Now notice, it doesn't say, are you unmarried?

45:51 Paul had a term he could have used for that, but he says, are you loosed from a wife? It could mean, are you divorced from a wife? You are therefore in a present single state, and the same counsel I gave to virgins who've never been married, I give to you, I would spare you. Don't seek a wife, but look at verse 28, but should you marry, you have not sinned.

46:15 But should you marry, you who are loosed from a wife, through a divorce, should you marry, you have not sinned. And then he goes on to say, and if a virgin marry, she has not sinned. He's counseling us, she has not sinned. He's counseling two different people in a single state.

46:35 Some who've been loosed from a wife, some who've never had a husband or wife. And he said, in both cases, I counsel you to remain single, but if you decide to marry, you have not sinned. Surely this is some of the realism of grace that meets us as and where we are. And surely we can draw the principle from the life of David and Bathsheba.

47:00 God did not demand that David, in spite of entering that marriage in such sordid beginnings, to go back and try to sort it all out. But God in grace met them where they were and as they were. And again, this is not to minimize the horrible temporal judgments that came. And in a sense, David went to his grave, cut off at the knees, and watched his family disintegrate before his very eyes.

47:31 And no doubt the memory of his sin was like a dark, dark ghost that followed him. But dear people, it's one thing to be haunted by providential and divine chastising factors. It's another thing to go under the false guilt that grace expects me to unscramble an egg. Repentance and restitution for the sins of unwarranted divorce and remarriage does not involve the disruption of another marriage.

48:05 Some would say to any who come among us in that condition, break off your present marriage. It was entered as adultery. Therefore, you're living in adultery. Put that woman away.

48:16 You would be hard pressed to demonstrate that that is the will of God from the Word of God. And the third point of this hodgepodge of counsel tonight is this. Divorce, and remarriage, and hear us carefully. Divorce and remarriage do not necessarily and automatically forever bar a man from public office.

Divorce and Remarriage Do Not Necessarily Bar from Public Office

48:43 Divorce and remarriage do not necessarily and automatically forever bar a man from public office. There is a position that had advocates very early when asceticism began to enter the life of the church in the post-apostolic age and it became very common and it's had very strong advocates ever since that no man who's ever had a divorce, some even say a man who was widowed and remarries is barred from public office. Why that would disqualify a man I've never been able to figure out. I've not yet read a polemic of any of the so-called church fathers who took that position.

49:23 But there is that position and it is very popular in many evangelical circles today that it would be shameful for a deacon or an elder to be a man who had a disrupted marriage in his past and is married the second time while he yet has a previous wife still living. Well, the Scripture is very clear on this point in 1 Timothy 3, verses 2 and 12. Look at the text of the Word of God. God has spoken that the bishop, the overseer, the pastor, the elder must be without reproach the husband of one wife, a literal rendering of the Greek would be a one-woman man. You have the Greek word one, you have the word woman or wife, and then you have the word man or husband. So a literal rendering would be a one-woman man. And the same conjunction of three words is used in verse 12.

50:23 Let deacons be husbands of one wife. Let them be one-woman men. That's it. That's it.

50:33 And so what God has said is this. If a man manifests blamelessness of character, and that man who manifests blamelessness of character happens to have in his past either, now follow closely, either a repented of unbiblical disruption of marriage, or one in which he was clearly the innocent party, the issue is, is his present pattern of life including his relationship to his wife, one in which you can say he's a one-woman man. One woman is legitimately his wife, one woman is legitimately in his heart, in his bed, in his affections, in his eyes, is he joined in a monogamous relationship that reflects the norm of God rooted in the order of creation. The clear indication is that the church then had many within its ranks who might otherwise be considered for leadership who had not yet sorted out the abnormalities of polygamy, though I know the matter is debated. I think the evidence from the responsible writers I've read indicates that polygamy, whether they dressed it up by saying you only had one wife

52:02 but several concubines, that's playing with words. And there were situations where people were converted and they had not yet been able to sort out their marital messes and become one-woman men. And God says, though they may have a place in the church, while they work on the casuistry and the logistics of sorting out the messes, as is true on many mission fields today, those who come to leadership must reflect a degree of attainment to the biblical norm that they can be pace-setters and examples for others. And for anyone to say that this requirement, the husband of one wife, means that he must have only had one wife in his entire existence, would, by the sheer pressure of logic, exclude a man who was married the third time because his first two wives died. And I ask you, by what reason can such a man be disqualified from office? When marriage is the God-ordained way for fulfillment, it's not good for the man to be alone. The God-ordained way to avoid immorality, 1 Corinthians chapter 7, and where the man who is in leadership is to be a pattern of good works in all things, by what reason can it be said that because he has a third marriage, two of which were terminated by death,

53:28 he's disqualified for office? You see the nonsense to which such unbiblical positions lead. And we say, without any shame or reservation, that we are grateful to God for the restorative grace that is planted in our ranks, one very highly esteemed and respected second to none among us, who is not excluded from his office, because God allowed him to come through the trauma of a disrupted marriage. And that's not self-justification.

The Church Must Refuse Legalistic Codes and Offer Hope

54:04 I'm not speaking of myself. But then there is a fourth point, that I want to make tonight, and I must hasten to a conclusion. It is this. Any church prayerfully applying biblical standards for marriage, divorce and remarriage will refuse to set up a legalistic code of its own.

54:35 Any church prayerfully applying biblical standards for marriage, divorce and remarriage will refuse to set up a legalistic code of its own. What I'm saying is this. I could produce for you church constitutions which say, no divorced person with a living former spouse shall be admitted as a member in good standing of this church. They've got a legalistic code all worked out ahead of time.

55:07 And those whom Christ has received, they refuse. This is what I mean. By setting up a code, by setting up a code that tries to anticipate all possible case situations. And I will very frankly tell you, I will not entertain questions from people saying, but pastor, what about this uncle of mine?

55:24 I say, no, no, no, no, no. No, no, no, no, no. Within the government of this church, it takes all the grace and wisdom we can get from God and His Word and the ministry of the Spirit to sort out messes where we plow and uncover sometimes for weeks to get all the facts. And we're just not going to be shooting little pat answers from the hip at all of the various tangled messes that come from marital disruptions.

56:00 And God have mercy on this church the day it seeks to do so. Now then, the $64 objection, not question, and this is my final point tonight. But pastor, won't the position you've articulated tonight let down the bars? Won't this encourage divorce?

56:21 Won't this open the door to license? Well, let me ask you a question. You who were here for the preaching this morning and last week, do you have a higher view of the sanctity and permanence of marriage now than you had two weeks ago, or a lower? How many of you have a higher view?

56:37 How many a lower view? Well, for you on the tape that can't see, it was all higher, not a hand went up. Saying they had a lower view. No.

56:47 To preach the standard of the Word of God is never to encourage license. It's never to lower the door concerning the sanctity, the nature, the permanence of the marriage institution. But my friend, what it does do is it leaves the door of hope open for sinners. Leaves the door open to the door of the door of the door of pardoning and restorative grace.

57:28 And it seems to me that that's what the church is supposed to be doing. Saying to sinners, this is a faithful saying, worthy of all acceptation, Christ Jesus came. Sinners with all kinds of backgrounds. Sinners with all kinds of tangled messes.

57:58 Sinners enmeshed in all things that would tax the wisdom of a hundred Solomons. And whatever we do, intentatively, prayerfully, cautiously proceeding in the outworking of what profile we shall give. When is it right for people with a past to be put forward for public ministry? Those are all matters of pastoral casuistry where great wisdom and tact and patience are needed.

58:35 But oh, may God grant that this church will never be, never be stigmatized as the place where all kinds of sinners are welcome except those that have been branded with the DNR brand. Dear people, if they're penitent sinners, they feel enough shame without you heaping any more upon them. How do I know? Because I've sat and wept with some of them sitting right here.

59:16 And it was the pain of feeling and empathizing with their shame that constrained me to preach tonight. When someone else offered to preach, I couldn't enjoy a vacation thinking of about seven or eight people that I feared would be left with an open and an unhealed wound. You say, you're laying it on pretty thick. No, I'm just telling it like it is.

59:45 And that's my heart in the presence of Almighty God. Know, my friend, what I've preached tonight does not let down the bars. It doesn't encourage divorce. It doesn't open the door to license.

59:59 It opens the door of hope for pardoning, restorative, renewing grace. And how I bless God that I look into the faces of not a few who are monuments of that very kind of grace. And in that sense, you'll understand what I mean. We're proud to be your pastor.

60:21 And if someone should come up whispering to us who somehow or other found out about your past and thought they could turn our hearts away by saying, don't you know? Smile and say, yes, and I know even more than that. And first, receive them and cleanse them and accept them. Don't complain to Jesus that you don't like the largeness of His grace.

61:01 Tell Jesus you'd like Him to become a Pharisee. Know by God's grace we shall continue to hold to the highest biblical standards of the sanctity of marriage, the nature of marriage, the permanence of marriage. But we shall say to those who are shattered and fractured and broken and bruised, comes the news. There's a Savior who forgives.

61:33 And there's a body of His people who try to reflect His heart and to manifest His grace. Well, I believe God's helped me to deliver my soul on this issue. I can go off on my vacation with a good conscience. And if any of you go on bleeding, it's because you ain't using the medicine.

61:57 I can't put it on you. I can lay it out and try to. May God help you to take the medicine. Drink it in until you know who you are in the presence of God and know that what you are before Him by grace, you are in the eyes of your brothers and sisters in this place.

62:19 We don't see you with a brand on your forehead. If there's any, we see the brand W, washed, S, sanctified, J, justified. WSJ, that's all we see. And that's over all of us because without that we'd all go to the same hell.

62:42 In that fellowship, let us rejoice and pray that God will make this place a haven of the shattered who find Jesus to be the healer and the forgiver of sinners. Let us pray. Our Father, we are indeed thankful that there is in Your dear Son and in the Gospel which proclaims Him grace and forgiveness for all manner of sin and blasphemy. And we pray that You would give strong faith to those who need this night to lay hold of that truth. We do earnestly pray that You will sanctify the preaching of the Word to the comfort of Your own, to those who've had perhaps undetected strands of Phariseeism. Lord, may such strands be exposed tonight for those who have been under the vicious legalistic teaching so prevalent in certain circles. Gracious God, may Your Word set them free.

64:02 Oh, Father, apply the Word in all the ways that You know it is most needed. And may it bear abundant fruit now and even until our Lord Jesus comes. We ask in His name. Amen.