There’s a country song by Aaron Tippin called, “You’ve Got to Stand for Something,” and it’s very reflective of my personality type. First verse and chorus reads,
“Now daddy didn't like trouble, but if it came along.
Everyone that knew him knew which side that he'd be on
He never was a hero, or this county's shinin' light
But you could always find him standing up
For what he thought was right
He'd say, ‘you've got to stand for something
Or you'll fall for anything
You've got to be your own man, not a puppet on a string
Never compromise what's right and uphold your family name
You've got to stand for something or you'll fall for anything’
I’m not much of a follower, but I’m pretty laid back. I’ve always been quick to allow other people to take the lead, especially when I don’t think their ideas are good, because if they win, I’ve learned something, and if fail, I figure my idea will work.
But like the song says, “You’ve got to stand for something, or you’ll fall for anything.” Each of us makes choices, that’s obvious, but to choose to stand on a principle when it would be easier to let it brush over, is why our society and our country is in the state it is. We’ve allowed so many things to happen to us, that only in the last twenty years have we been waking up to the disaster that was hurtling towards us. And though some have woken up earlier than others, it wasn’t COVID and the shutting down of the country that go the masses to wake up, it’s the pain at the pump and the grocery store.
Yet that’s just the tip of the iceberg. The physical things that are storming against us, have a spiritual root and if we say we are called by the name of Jesus, then as Christians, we must stand up or allow what our forefathers built to fall.
We’re celebrating Independence Day tomorrow, the day a people stood up on principle and said no more. We must emulate that conviction. But in the end it comes down to choice, we must choose. We have a choice to stand on biblical principles, which our American principles were founded. And as Christians, it is biblical principles that we must seek first, and where our foundation is the firmest.
A choice to stand or not to stand is the freedom that this country affords us, and it’s that ability to make a choice to follow Jesus or to not, to be light in this dark time or not, that brings us back into our Matthew series, where we’ll pick it back up in chapter 19, starting in verse 1. And as we get open our Bibles to Matthew 19:1, lets bring ourselves up to speed at where we are.
In the last several weeks we have been working through chapters 17-18, where we have seen Jesus call us to a faith that is summed up by the illustration of a child. A child believes what they’re told, and a child trusts that their parents are looking out of their best interest. God is calling us to such a faith as this; where we follow and trust him and he leads.
In one of these areas that we must follow and trust is in the area of forgiveness. Jesus gave us both a process to go through when a fellow believer has sinned against us, and revealed that we need to be people who extend forgiveness no matter the outcome. This is hard, but for a disciple who has child-like faith, they follow and trust that Jesus is right.
With child-like faith square in our minds, we now return to Matthew via, chapter 19, verse 1. Let’s read.
1 When Jesus had finished saying these things, he left Galilee and went into the region of Judea to the other side of the Jordan. 2 Large crowds followed him, and he healed them there.
3 Some Pharisees came to him to test him. They asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any and every reason?”
4 “Haven’t you read,” he replied, “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’ 5 and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’? 6 So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”
7 “Why then,” they asked, “did Moses command that a man give his wife a certificate of divorce and send her away?”
8 Jesus replied, “Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard. But it was not this way from the beginning. 9 I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another woman commits adultery.”
10 The disciples said to him, “If this is the situation between a husband and wife, it is better not to marry.”
11 Jesus replied, “Not everyone can accept this word, but only those to whom it has been given. 12 For there are eunuchs who were born that way, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by others—and there are those who choose to live like eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. The one who can accept this should accept it.”
Now this is one of those passages that contains a lot of uncomfortable information. If you’ve ever gone through a divorce, this might be a passage that, like the one before it on forgiveness, might make you buck what God is trying to say. But like the forgiveness passage before it, we must realize that God is calling us to his way and not our own.
Throughout Matthew, Jesus has called us to build our lives upon his word (Matthew 7:24-29). Jesus has called us to follow and love him more than our family (Matthew 8:18-22 & 12:46-50). If we are to be Jesus’ disciples, if we are to be Christians, then our will, our desires, our thoughts and actions, must be checked at the door. We must give them over to Christ, because he is the one to whom we are to give our allegiance. This is a hard teaching and one that Jesus is trying to get across in this passage. So let’s see what Jesus is trying to get us to understand here.
If we look at this passage solely as Jesus dealing with divorce, we’ll miss the deeper point. Remember, Matthew is being led by the Holy Spirit to connect events in Jesus’ life. We just came out of a passage where Jesus is calling his disciples to recognize the great debt God has forgiven us, and how we too must forgive others.
Then we are brought to another situation where Jesus is being confronted by some religious leaders. They’ve asked him for a sign, they’ve asked him about the Sabbath, now their asking him about divorce. And their question is, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any and every reason?”
What’s interesting is how Jesus’ responds. If we’ve been paying attention throughout the Gospel of Matthew, we would realize that Jesus is constantly reestablishing his word over the traditions of man. Jesus isn’t just reiterating what the Israelites know, he is grabbing hold of it and revealing the underlying truth of what God intended from the beginning. God never intended there to be anger, which leads to murder. God never intended there to be lust, which leads to adultery. Jesus is teaching that these things that are actions which are sinful, come from motivations that are also sin.
So here again, Jesus takes it to God’s original plan. “Haven’t you read…that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’ 5 and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’? 6 So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”
Jesus is bringing these Pharisees to Genesis 1 and 2. God’s perfect creation had a man and a woman come together in the matrimony that God himself performed, to be an inseparable union. Because of this, the writer of Genesis makes a commentary on why a man leaves his family, it's so that union can be made complete.
But there’s a but from the Pharisees, “Why then…did Moses command that a man give his wife a certificate of divorce and send her away?” This reminds me of Jesus’ encounter with Satan in Matthew 4. Satan would use half-truths of Scripture to make his point. Here the Pharisees are doing the same thing.
Jesus’ response is where the deeper connection is made, “Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard. But it was not this way from the beginning.” Why did Moses give a way for an easy divorce procedure? Because the people had hard hearts. They wanted a loophole in God’s command. They wanted a way to skirt the system. Jesus is pointing out that God’s intention was for a man and woman to be united until death. But the sinfulness of the Israelites caused Moses to allow a stipulation within God’s law for a way to break God’s original intention.
And here it is, this is the real problem. It’s not only the Israelites, or the Pharisees who want loopholes in God’s law, it’s all of us. We twist and rework God’s command to make God in our own image. Just in this passage, Jesus says, “Haven’t you read…that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female…” But there are people today who say they are Christians that put forth a belief system that believes God created multiple genders, yet Christ would say, haven’t you read?
There are people who say that God is love and so we can do what ever we want, but the Holy Spirit would have us know that God is also holy and just and detests sin. As the Psalmist recognizes when he writes, “For you are not a God who is pleased with wickedness; with you, evil people are not welcome (5:4).”
People will say, I can do what I want, I have freedom in Christ, but God would have us hear, “Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; 20 you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your bodies (1 Corinthians 6:19-20).”
The Pharisees are not the only one’s trying to skirt God’s command, we can fall into the same trap too. This is why in response to his disciples’ question, “If this is the situation between a husband and wife, it is better not to marry.” Jesus responds with something that many think pertains to celibacy or with marriage, but it goes beyond that. This whole time the Holy Spirit has be trying to communicate one thing, we either follow Jesus or we don’t. We either submit to him or we don’t. There’s no halfway point here. There’s no making God say what we want, there’s only his way that we must follow.
We’re either forgivers as Jesus forgives, or we are not. In Jesus’ words of the eunuchs there are three types: Eunuchs who are by birth; these are those who will not marry because of a birth inability to have children. There are eunuchs who have been physical castrated; these have been made so that they cannot have children. And there are eunuchs who chose to not have marriage relationships because of their devotion to God’s kingdom.
What Jesus is getting at is this, you must make the decision to follow Jesus’ teaching and submit to him. Not out of natural half to, or because someone forced it on you, but because you have made a choice to do what God says. This fits in with everything that has gone before it, and what started out in chapter 18 with Jesus speaking about his disciples having child-like faith. We trust God implicit; not trying to impose our own will, but accepting God’s will in our lives. “Your Kingdom come, Your will be done.” Is what Jesus told us to pray in Matthew 6:10.
And what happens immediately after? We read this in Matthew 19:13-15, “Then people brought little children to Jesus for him to place his hands on them and pray for them. But the disciples rebuked them. 14 Jesus said, ‘Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.’ 15 When he had placed his hands on them, he went on from there.”
The disciples didn’t get it. They tried to exclude those who Jesus wanted to come to him. They still did not grasp the child-like faith they were to have. They were still trying to control God, just like the Pharisees.
If we are to be Jesus’ disciples, we must come to this all important realization, God is God and we are not. I submit to his word, I don’t try to make God submit to mine. That means that there are things that I will not be able to have. Just as the eunuch cannot have children, so too Jesus’ disciples will not be able to do certain things, all of which are rooted in sin.
So my challenge for you this week is to seek God in something you might not like that God says. That might be marriage and divorce, as it was in today’s passage. It might be in forgiveness that we talked about last week. It might be in the fact that God states he only created two genders/sexes, and that only when the opposite sex gets together in marriage that’s the only place sexual activity is supposed to be. Take it before God, tell him you don’t like that he says it, and then submit to what he says. It’s what we are to do as his disciples.
I have to tell you, there’s been a lot of things that when I started following Jesus I didn’t agree with. But as I have submitted, God has revealed his intention behind why he commands the things he does, and I have seen how his ways are better than mine. And now, I don’t question God in his decisions, instead I ask for the strength of the Holy Spirit to follow his commands.
Following Jesus isn’t for the faint of heart; it’s not a cake walk. It’s standing on God’s Word when others are falling to the wayside. Let us be a people who’s first thought is not to rebel against what God says, but to submit to it so that we may better understand God, and come before him as his children. Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment