It's All In The Approach Mark 10:2-13
The sermon today isn’t about keys for a great marriage or anything like that. What we have before us is actually a very basic lesson about 2 different ways of approaching God. And to make the point, God shows us two extremes, two groups of people in the ancient Middle East that couldn’t have been more opposite.
In verses 2-12 we have the Pharisees, who were known for their brilliance, their wisdom, and their high and pious way of living. Then in verses 13-16 we have kids, small, not yet educated or wise, and totally dependent. Each of these groups has a way of coming to Jesus. The Pharisees, with man-made way, rules, and knowledge, and impressive ski. And the kids, with a Holy-Spirit led way, totally reliant upon God, with nothing of earthly value to offer to him.
We start with the Pharisees. A group of these learned teaches come out to meet Jesus in Judea. Mark lets us know WHY they are coming, they want to test Jesus, or to trap him. The interaction between the Pharisees and Jesus is talked about all the time in the Gospels, almost to the point of redundancy.
So what’s the killer question they have for Jesus, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?” Now as always, this may seem like a straightforward question, but it isn’t. There was a huge argument over how to interpret a rather obscure passage in the Old Testament Law in Exodus 24. I won’t read it here but the jist of it is that Moses said if a man gives a certificate of divorce to his wife for something indecent, and she remarries, and either gets divorced again, or the guy dies, she is NOT to go back to her first husband.
And this is the big debate. A Rabbi named Shammai, said that “indecency” should be interpreted to mean infidelity, so divorce should only come about if there was unfaithfulness. A Rabbi named Hillel said that, “indecency” could mean anything, and that a man could divorce his wife for any reason. (He mentions burning supper, not looking so hot, etc).
So we go back the question, and why they thought it was an airtight trap. If Jesus answers according to Shammai, they will come at him with Hillel. If he answers Hillel, they’ll hammer him with Shammai.
And if Jesus says, never divorce, they will have the slam dunk case, saying, “Are you going against MOSES!” But these things never quite work out the way the Pharisees picture them working out. Because Jesus messes everything up by answering their question with a question, “What did Moses command you?” And they start to fall back on their heels, they said, “Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of divorce and to send her away.”
And Jesus leans into them, “And Jesus said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart he wrote you this commandment. But from the beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female.’ ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.”
He says in essence, first off, the discussion isn’t about the divorce certificate. Moses let you issue those so there could be some semblance of order in the community, he didn’t say just because you are allowed to do it, that you should whenever you feel like it.
And secondly, Jesus was offended at the nature of the discussion, because in arguing about the finer points of the Law, and trying to make a case for when it’s OK to get a divorce and when it’s not OK, they stopped seeing the big picture. Lost in 4 verses in Exodus, the stopped caring about Genesis.
They knew that divorce should be a serious matter. But instead of working to honor God’s design, they wanted to find technicalities in the language that would allow them to do whatever they felt like, and to avoid confronting the reality of their own sinfulness and unrepentant hearts. They were working on trying to Justify themselves before God. In theological terms, to be Justified before God means simply to be pure, and holy and able to stand before him (Just-As-If I had no sin).
The Pharisees thought they could reach this state by their wisdom, and superior arguing skills, and finagling, they could work their way into the kingdom of God and stand before Him. Like I said at the beginning of the sermon, this lesson isn’t REALLY about divorce. But this is an extreme example that gets us to ask some hard questions of ourselves. Do I do this too? The answer for all of us is, “Yes you do.”
We too work hard at trying to justify ourselves before God, at making ourselves feel better about what we do or don’t do, even if we know deep down that we aren’t living up to the plans, and standards, and intent that God has for our lives. We try to JUSTIFY ourselves by focusing only on certain sins (pet sins) to draw attention away from what WE struggle with.
We try to JUSTIFY ourselves sometimes by using a sliding scale of sin. Yes I stole 2 cookies, but Frank stole 4, hey I’m twice as good as Frank! It doesn’t work that way. It also doesn’t work to try and Justify ourselves by trying to make up our own rules. Hillel tried it by making up new rules for divorce.
Even churches try to make up new rules for what God says about sin, about sexuality, about marriage. It’s never a good idea! The Law is the message of the reality of God’s holiness and standards and how we fall desperately short of those. The Law points out our sins, and our hopelessness to stand on our own two feet before him. The Gospel is God’s reality of his love for us, shown to us on the cross, where he chooses to love us unconditionally, and undeservedly, in spite of our sins.
And God uses both. With his Law he afflicts the comfortable. With his Gospel he comforts the afflicted. So when we are stubborn in our sins, or trying to make our own way to God, or justifying ourselves. God isn’t going to say, “OK you win, I guess I’ll let these sins slide.” NO, he will afflict us with the hammer of the Law. No, I will not be OK with your sin. No, you cannot stand before me. No, you cannot come to me with that hard heart. It’s a terrifying thing to be afflicted by the Law. At times, we all are!
And this kind of response is what we learn about in the last part of the Gospel lesson. It’s a lesson that God teaches us by means of children. We see this in how the disciples respond to them. “And they were bringing children to him that he might touch them, and the disciples rebuked them.” Don’t bring those kids in here right now, Jesus has IMPORTANT stuff going on. But Jesus has none of it, he says, “Let the children come to me; do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of God. Truly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it.” And he took them in his arms and blessed them, laying his hands on them.
We enter God’s Kingdom, not like warriors, or scholars, or kings. We enter God’s kingdom like children, with nothing to offer Him, with empty hands, with only our dependence, our repentance. The Doors to heaven swing only on the twin hinges of the cross and the empty tomb, and by God’s grace they swing wide for us.
So where are you this morning. It’s time to stop the fight. To the face the reality that God has forgiven you, and loves you, and that the cross is enough. Today, honor God by letting go of what he has long since forgotten about.
AMEN