Relationships, Marriage, & Divorce: What's Jesus Have to Say? | 6.30.24 | Mark 10:1-12

I don’t know if you’ve ever looked at the animal world and considered the relationships and behavioral patterns between male and female, you know, finding a partner, mating, reproducing. I didn’t know this until I came across this fact but 90% of bird species and there are about 10,000 in the world-mate for life.
That is to say, once a male and female come together in a physical reproductive bond, they stay exclusively with that mate for the rest of their lives. There’s actually quite a few other animal species that mate for life and remain-to use anthropomorphic language-in monogamous relationship with their partner. Otters have a playful, kind of cute and cuddly reputation, but the love between male and female runs deep. River otters in particular are known to be monogamous and typically stay loyal to one partner for their entire lives. And on top of their romantic commitments, mother otters also demonstrate their incredible maternal instinct by caring for 2 litters/year-which means up to 12 otter pups/year with just a 60-day gestation period!
We’re all familiar with wolves as tight-knit, closely-bonded, family, pack animals. What you’re probably less familiar with is that within those packs, wolves run in exclusive pairs of male and female-especially gray wolves. In the wild, each wolf pack is actually made up of multiple nuclear families comprised of individual coupled pairs of male and female that mate for and stay together for life. And the only time that a male and female couple will separate is by death-when one of them dies and they have no choice for survival and reproduction but to find another mate.
And it is fascinating that we see this pattern-at least in some animal species-of monogamous relationships and single-mate orientation for life. The question is where does that come from Where do the instincts and desires and behaviors that lead these animals to mate for life and remain in monogamous relationship with one another come from? Where do they originate? Where do these instincts, desires, and behaviors find their source?!
I’ll tell you where-Creation! From Creation! From the Creator-God-who specifically and purposefully made them with the instincts and desires and behaviors that lead them to pursue and remain in intimate, personal, lifelong, monogamous relationship. Now think about this: If God made animals so precisely and carefully in a way that determines the way they would live their lives-and they’re just animals, soul-less, spirit-less creatures, not made in the image of God-how much more precisely and carefully and determinatively did he create human beings? Human beings-you and me?
On Day 1 God created light. On Day 2 God created sky/waters. On Day 3 God created the seas, land, and vegetation. On Day 4 God created the sun, moon, and stars. On Day 5 God created the animals-the birds of the sky, the fish in the sea, and the animals in the field. And on the 6th Day God created man as the apex of his creation-his representative on earth-the only created being he impressed his image upon-to have dominion over every created thing on earth.
And in answering the Pharisees’ question about whether or not it is lawful for a man to divorce his wife, Jesus takes them all the way back to the beginning of creation for his answer. He doesn’t take them to Moses’ words in Deuteronomy 24, or any other Scriptural argument for that matter that they thought was authoritative on the issue…He takes them all the way back to God’s ontological will and decree as expressed from the very beginning, when he created the world and mankind as the pinnacle of it.
He takes them back to God’s architectural design and ordinance in creation and unequivocally says, “No! It is not lawful for a man to divorce his wife!” “Because from the beginning, God made them male and female, and when they leave their mother and father, God joins them together in a holy matrimony called marriage, and no one can separate what God has joined.”
And that is the reason why God hates divorce! We saw last week what God’s perspective is on divorce-He hates it. He hated it with OT Israel because the men were using it cheaply and trivially to divorce their wives for no good reason, just like many do today, and he hates that.
And he hated it especially when the Israelites divorced their wives to marry foreign, pagan women that he knew would lead them into idolatry-just like he hates it today when a Christian person marries or remarries an unbeliever knowing what that inevitably and invariably almost always leads to…
God hates divorce because it goes against the most basic and foundational marriage ordinance that God instituted in the beginning, back in Gen 1 and 2, as the principle and pattern that we are to follow today: one man, one woman, for life. That’s the ideal, that’s the goal…at least it was in a perfect world as God created it, before the fall…And that’s what we in this second part of Mark 10:1-12 beginning in verse 6.