Mark 10: Do Not Let Man Separate

Today’s reading is Mark 10.

It breaks my heart that more people are not taught what Jesus said about marriage before they get married. Many people seek Jesus, but are disheartened by His saying because they don’t hear it until they have made a wreck of their lawful marriages and found a wonderful but unlawful spouse. They come to Jesus like the rich man wondering how they can gain eternal life and Jesus says, “It is not lawful for you to have your spouse,” and they go away sorrowful.

Pay close attention to what Jesus says. The Pharisees ask, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?” Jesus’s response, after He explains Moses’s concession in Deuteronomy 24:1-4, is “What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.”

Two things of note in this statement. First, Jesus’s answer to the Pharisees’ question is “No. It is not lawful for a man to divorce his wife.” Second, Jesus doesn’t say man is not capable of separating what God has joined together, but that man is not allowed to separate it.

This dispenses with two misunderstandings often espoused. First, Jesus did not permit divorce as long as the divorced do not remarry someone else. Jesus said we are not to separate a lawfully bound married couple. Second, man is able to separate what God has joined. When man separates them, they are separated. They are not still joined in some spiritual way. They are not still married in God’s eyes. According to Romans 7:1-3, they are bound to God’s marriage law regarding the original spouse. If they marry someone else, just as Jesus says, they will be adulterers. However, they are not bound to each other. They are not still married to the initial spouse in some way allowing them to somehow get divorced “for real” in God’s eyes later.

Yes, Matthew’s accounts of Jesus’s teaching on the matter provides an exception to these general rules regarding divorce on the grounds of sexual immorality (see Matthew 5:31-32; 19:9). While Mark’s account doesn’t include the exception, it does demonstrate Jesus’s comments on marriage apply whether the husband pursues the divorce or the wife.

For Jesus, marriage comes from creation. It was not something people came up with as societal benefit, political expedient, or emotional fulfillment. God made male and female, therefore marriage. God took from the side of the one man and made woman. These two that were separated can now be made one again. What God has made one, keep one.

Tomorrow’s reading is Mark 10.

PODCAST!!!

Click here to take about 15 minutes to listen to the Text Talk conversation between Andrew Roberts and Edwin Crozier.

PATHS:
Discuss Today’s Meditation with Your Family

How does Mark 10 prompt or improve your praise of God?

Pure Hearts

Today’s reading is Matthew 15.

After explaining to the apostles that He wasn’t all that concerned about how offended the Pharisees were, they still didn’t understand what He taught. They call it a parable. However, it doesn’t seem like much of a parable to me. That is, Jesus isn’t telling a story about mouths that actually refers to some other thing. He’s really talking about mouths. He really is talking about the kind of things we put in our mouths and the kind of things that come out of our mouths. He is talking about food and speech.

What goes into our mouths does not affect our hearts. It doesn’t matter what we eat, our heart is not defiled. Food goes to the stomach, not the heart. Even if there were cleanliness laws that Jesus was maintaining in His covenant, it wouldn’t work like the Pharisees claimed it did. As far as our heart is concerned spiritually, what we eat doesn’t impact our heart.

But what we say does impact our heart. Or rather, what we say and what we do shows our heart has been impacted. Evil thoughts defile us. Evil words defile us. Murder, adultery, fornication, theft, false witness, slander all defile us. These things start in the heart and then come out in the speech and behavior.

The key is to keep our hearts pure. This is not new with Jesus. Proverbs 4:23 says, “Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life” (ESV). As we piece this together, we realize it is not what goes into our mouths that defiles us, rather it is what goes in our ears and eyes. It is what we see and what we listen to. It is what our minds meditate upon. As Jesus had said in Matthew 6:22, the eye is the lamp of the body. We have to keep our eye clear and clean and pure. Otherwise our whole body will be dark and defiled.

In a day and age when entertainment runs everything, when we are constantly listening to music, watching tv, seeing movies, we need to take Jesus’s warning seriously. The heart sends forth the springs of life. Keep it pure. Protect it. Don’t think you can defile it with what you watch and listen to while somehow keeping your life pure. You can try. But you will fail.

PODCAST!!!

Click here to take about 15 minutes to listen to the Text Talk conversation between Andrew Roberts and Edwin Crozier sparked by this post.

Discuss the Following Questions with Your Family

1. What are your initial reactions to the chapter and the written devo above?
2. Why does what goes into our mouths not defile us?
3. Why does what comes out of our mouths defile us?
4. How can we protect our heart and our mouths?
5. What do you think we should pray for and about in light of this chapter and today’s post?