CCC Livestream - The Gospel Shaped Family - Mark 10:1-12
Live Worship Gathering: 6.14.2026
Preaching: Jason Purdy
I invite you to take your copy of God’s word and turn with me to Mark 10.
We will look at verses 1-12 today.
We are continuing our summer series called “The Gospel Shaped Family.”
We are walking through some key passages on marriage, on singleness, on parenting, and on children, as well as some passages addressing key issues that we all deal with in family life - both in our biological families and in our church family.
My prayer is that God would continue to make us and shape us by His grace and through His gospel into a godly church family that is made up of godly gospel shaped families.
The main theme of the first half of the gospel of Mark is Jesus’ identity as both God and man, and more specifically how Jesus is the Son of God.
Now, in the second half of Mark’s gospel, where we find ourselves today, the main theme shifts to the idea of discipleship and humble service, or to put it another way, how we live in light of knowing and following the God-man Jesus Christ, the Son of God.
Jesus has begun to tell his disciples he will be delivered over and killed and on the third day rise again, and he uses this information to call us who follow Jesus to die to ourselves and take up the humble life of service to Christ in this world.
And as we look at chapter 10, the gospel of Mark is going to show us how following Jesus affects key relationships in our lives like marriage and children.
We will consider the first twelve verses on marriage this week, and the verses on children next Sunday.
Now, I want to acknowledge from the beginning of this sermon that I realize a sermon on marriage and divorce and other areas of family life are the kinds of sermons that we can all feel a little uneasy about for a few reasons.
One is, many people in the room are in different stages and phases of life and have had many different experiences with the topic of family, marriage, and divorce, so some people may feel like the sermon isn’t going to apply to them at all and others may feel like the sermon may target them a bit too specifically.
But I want to remind you that all teaching on marriage from the Scripture is first and foremost pointing us to relationship with Christ and His church, so the truths apply to everyone of us who are sinners in need of a bridegroom to come and cleanse our sin and make us, His church, His bride.
Secondly, I want to remind us that all of us have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God when it comes to His perfect standard for our family relationships, so God’s perfect standards reveal sin in all of us and lead us to our constant need to trust in God’s great grace in the gospel.
So would you follow along as I read God’s word to us?
Mark 10:1–12 ESV
1 And he left there and went to the region of Judea and beyond the Jordan, and crowds gathered to him again. And again, as was his custom, he taught them.
2 And Pharisees came up and in order to test him asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?” 3 He answered them, “What did Moses command you?” 4 They said, “Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of divorce and to send her away.” 5 And Jesus said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart he wrote you this commandment. 6 But from the beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female.’ 7 ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, 8 and the two shall become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two but one flesh. 9 What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.”
10 And in the house the disciples asked him again about this matter. 11 And he said to them, “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her, 12 and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.”
1. The Hard Hearts Of Men Seek Excuses For Divorce
Jesus and the disciples are traveling closer and closer to Jerusalem where he will be arrested, tried, and crucified,
Yet, wherever they traveled, a crowd gathered, and Jesus taught them.
Back in Mark 3 we read that the Jewish religious leaders, the Pharisees, are intent on destroying Jesus and his reputation.
So, they come to him in the midst of the crowd and ask him, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?”
Now, we know the Pharisees were not asking a genuine question seeking a genuine answer, because verse two says they asked him in order to test him.
A. The Hard Hearted Want To Test God
You see, in the time of Jesus, the question of what God said about divorce was a highly debated issue.
It was one of those issues where you get yourself into trouble both socially and politically no matter which way you answer the question.
To heighten the tension more, Jesus is in the territory of Herod, who John the Baptist publicly rebuked for sinfully marrying his brother’s wife, and John the Baptist lost his head for it.
See, there seemed to be some Old Testament passages that allowed for divorce, and others that condemned divorce, so different Jews came down on different sides of the issue, but either way Jesus answered, the Pharisees knew they could get Jesus in a lot of trouble for his answer.
But look at verse 3, how does Jesus first answer their question about divorce?
Jesus, is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife? Jesus answered, “What did Moses command you?”
Remember in 1 Corinthians when Paul wrote about the betrothed, the first thing he said is: “I have no command from the Lord.”
Where did he learn to consider what the Scriptures say when it comes to any question? He learned it from His Lord Jesus.
The truth is it doesn’t ultimately matter what I think or feel about an issue or what you think or feel, it matters what the God of all things has said.
But, listen, you need to know your Bible, because just throwing out one verse usually never answers an issue correctly.
You need to consider every passage in the Bible that speaks to the subject and come to understand how they all fit together. We must study.
We are going to see Jesus give us an example of that in just a moment.
Jesus asked, “What did Moses command you?”
So, the Pharisees answer, “Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of divorce and to send her away.”
And this answer from the Pharisees was pointing to something Moses wrote, but it was a horrible misunderstanding of the passage.
Yes, Moses did write about a man giving his wife a certificate of divorce, but it was certainly not a command from God to do so.
B. The Hard Hearted Want To Use The Bible Wrongly
Listen, if your heart is hard toward the Spirit of God, you can twist the word of God to say whatever you want it to say.
You want to get divorced and you want to find a Bible verse to back it up as an excuse, you will find one.
Let’s see what the Pharisees did here.
When the Pharisees answered that Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of divorce and to send her away, they are referring to
Deuteronomy 24:1–4 ESV
1 “When a man takes a wife and marries her, if then she finds no favor in his eyes because he has found some indecency in her, and he writes her a certificate of divorce and puts it in her hand and sends her out of his house, and she departs out of his house, 2 and if she goes and becomes another man’s wife, 3 and the latter man hates her and writes her a certificate of divorce and puts it in her hand and sends her out of his house, or if the latter man dies, who took her to be his wife, 4 then her former husband, who sent her away, may not take her again to be his wife, after she has been defiled, for that is an abomination before the Lord. And you shall not bring sin upon the land that the Lord your God is giving you for an inheritance.
Notice with me, this is an example of case law, now I’m no lawyer, but I am confident we can together make sense of what case law means.
Moses says, “In a case where a man divorces his wife, and the wife goes and marries some other man, then that man divorces here, the first man cannot go back and remarry her.”
Nowhere in this passage did Moses write, “It is okay to for a man to give his wife a certificate of divorce.”
He only says, in the case where this happens, because in a fallen sinful world, God knows it is going to happen.
He doesn’t say it should happen.
He certainly doesn’t command for it to happen.
The only command in the whole passage is that the man who divorced his wife can’t go back and make her remarry him after some other guy has already married and divorced her.
This is why social media is always the wrong avenue to make a biblical argument, it is so easy to get the Bible wrong when you try to tack a verse or two to some agenda.
And that’s what the Pharisees did here.
So, Jesus says, “Because of the hardness of your heart he wrote you this commandment.”
The goal of the actual biblical commandment was to save the woman from being thrown around from man to man and back again for men’s own selfish and sinful agendas.
You see, God is good, merciful, and wise enough to not just offer us His perfect standard in his law, but to also offer help in his law for cases when His perfect standard is sinfully broken.
In order to stop a sinful situation from perpetuating to death and destruction every single time.
But, the Pharisees took this case law passage and twisted it for their agenda to say that a man can divorce his wife for any reason by just offering her a certificate of divorce.
You see in our flesh, we naturally make God’s word about us, and we use God’s word for our agenda.
We do this by asking the wrong questions.
We should come to God’s word asking, “God, how can I please you in my relationships?”
But in our flesh, we come to God’s word asking, “God, what can I get away with in my relationships?”
And you have already sinned by placing yourself at the center and coming to the Bible for it to say what you want it to say.
So, instead of saying, “God, I want to get married, or I want to get divorced, is that okay with you?”
We should be coming in worship saying, “God, you created marriage. So what do you say marriage is? And what do you say pleases you as I consider relationships, marriage, and divorce?”
I’m not saying there is never ever a time where divorce is not permissible by God biblically, but I am saying, that is certainly a narrow exception, yet our culture even in the church has sometimes tried to make it a broad rule.
It is a hard heartened sinfulness against a holy God that makes excuses for divorce.
Jesus then continues his answer by showing from the Old Testament what God teaches about the institution of marriage that He created:
6 But from the beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female.’ 7 ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, 8 and the two shall become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two but one flesh. 9 What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.”
2. God’s Design For Marriage Excludes Divorce
Let’s explore the five ways Jesus argues that God’s design for marriage excludes divorce:
A. God Created Marriage Before The Fall Of Man
Jesus has said, “Moses wrote what he wrote in Deuteronomy because of the hardness of men’s heart, God knew man would sin and divorce, but he contrasts the sinfulness of divorce with the original creation of marriage.”
Jesus points out here that God’s design for marriage is from the beginning of creation.
That means that marriage was ordained by God before man ever sinned.
Marriage was a perfectly designed institution for a man and a woman to unconditionally love one another and display the faithful love of God to one another in worship to Him.
It wasn’t like God created people to worship him, but they sinned, so now they need to marry to fulfill the holes they have because of sin.
No, marriage was God’s design from the beginning as a holy institution.
That doesn’t mean that everyone must marry.
What it means is that marriage should be held in high regard as beautiful, holy, and precious, and should never be entered into lightly.
If God leads a man and woman to marry, it is in the context of their marriage that they are to live, worship, and follow Jesus in discipleship.
Marriage is holy and must be honored highly as God designed and created it from the beginning.
That means if anything is a threat to my marriage, I must cut it out as Christ tells us to with all sin in the end of chapter 9.
We must honor marriage as instituted by God in order to represent God.
God created marriage before the fall of man.
B. God Created Marriage To Be Between A Male And A Female
Jesus said, “But from the beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female.’”
See, it is because of our sin and rebellion that there is a concept like, “The Battle of the Sexes.”
It is because of our sin and rebellion that there is any misogyny among men or any feminism among women.
We should highly honor God’s design in choosing to make men men, and choosing to make women women.
God chose through your biology to make you male or female.
It is our sin and rebellion that would replace God’s design for a man and a woman in marriage with a man and a man or a woman and a woman.
And if you say that is what you desire, let’s just acknowledge that God’s word says that we have all kinds of sinful desires that we must war against by the power of God’s grace.
God’s design is that a man and a woman uniquely compliment and honor one another in bringing unique characteristics together to fulfill a reflection of God’s glory that would not be fulfilled with just one gender.
Because God created and designed marriage, He gets to define what it is.
This is why we cannot call any union outside of one man and one woman under God a marriage, because God already defined marriage as one man and one woman, so we rebel and sin against the Creator if we choose to define it any other way.
God created marriage to be between a man and a woman.
C. God Created Marriage As The Most Intimate Of Earthly Relationships
Jesus says in verses 7 and 8, “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.”
In marriage, there is a leaving and a breaking away from one’s family of origin in order to establish the intimate relationship of a marriage.
Listen, we are to honor and love our parents and families, but we are not married to our parents or extended families.
We are married to our spouse.
And that marriage is an exclusive relationship which experiences a depth of commitment and intimacy that should be found in no other earthly relationship.
Your most ultimate relationship is with your Lord and Savior, then your spouse, then anyone else.
This means when you say “I do” to your spouse in marriage, you are saying, in essence, “I don’t” to every other person in the world.
I do commit in the sight of God to covenant in relationship to this person to have and to hold until death parts, and I don’t make that commitment to anyone else.
“I do” commit to physically pursuing sexual intimacy with this one person for life, and “I don’t” ever pursue it with anyone else.
“I do” commit to emotionally pursuing a depth of intimacy with this one person for life, and “I don’t” offer that kind of emotional intimacy with anyone else.
“I do” commit to honoring this relationship as second only to my relationship with Jesus, and “I don’t” prioritize anyone else over my spouse.
You should not let mom and dad interfere or meddle in the intimacy of your marriage relationship.
You should take extreme measures to treat anyone of the opposite sex as a brother or sister and not an option for intimacy.
I love my sister, but I am never offering my sister intimacy whether physical, emotional, or in any other way that rivals my spouse.
I would never flirt with my sister. I would never share something with my sister that I have not first shared with my spouse.
Listen, if a woman wants to text me, call me, meet with me, you know who is the first one to know all about it? My wife.
If I am friends with another woman, you know who that woman is going to hear a lot about? My wife.
You should say “no” to any other relationship that threatens to get in the middle of your marriage relationship in any way.
If there is a relationship in your life that threatens your marriage relationship, cut it out.
Someone else can love that person, someone else can share Jesus with that person, someone else can disciple that person.
God created marriage to be the most intimate of human relationships.
D. God Created Marriage As A One-Flesh Union
Jesus said, “The two shall become one flesh.”
A One-Flesh union means you no longer have two individuals, but one entity, one marriage.
You no longer have this autonomous individual and that autonomous individual meeting in the middle 50/50.
No, a marriage is two people becoming one.
The physical act of marriage gives us a physical picture of two becoming one.
And that is one of the biblical reasons sex before marriage is a sin.
Because physical oneness is supposed to be matched by the oneness of marriage in every other area,
Emotional oneness, spiritual oneness, financial oneness, purposeful oneness.
One way I apply this is when a family member or friend asks me how I’m doing, many times I say, “We are doing well.” Or “We are struggling.”
Why do I say we? Because there is no me without Robin. The two have become one.
If your wife is struggling, you are struggling. If your husband is hurting, you are hurting.
Listen, if you walk into a marriage with a plan to have separate finances, separate priorities, separate interests, and separate pursuits, that’s not a marriage.
That’s a contractual agreement.
I will be my autonomous self. You will be your autonomous self, and as long as my individuality is not hindered by your individuality, we will keep the contract.
That’s not a marriage.
A marriage is a covenant promise of commitment.
For better or for worse, in sickness and in health, those aren’t words of a contract, those are words of a covenant,
Because whether you can uphold your end of the bargain or not, we are one, and I’m not going anywhere.
Because listen, there are just days when you can’t uphold your end of the bargain, there are days that I can’t uphold my end of the bargain.
And on those days, a contract would be null and void, but a covenant is strong and enduring. A covenant is unconditional filled with gracious and merciful commitment.
If you are broken, you are broken together. If you are broke, you are broke together. If you are in trouble, you are in trouble together.
The two become one flesh.
E. God Joins A Man And A Woman In Marriage Until Death
Jesus says, “So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.”
Notice, in the mind of the Jews, it was men who held the most authoritative position in the marriage.
If a man chooses to divorce his wife, give her a certificate of divorce.
Well, what if a woman wanted to divorce her husband, sorry, she doesn’t have that right.
But in the mind of God, it is God who holds the ultimate authoritative position in the marriage.
It is God who joined them together, let not man separate.
When Robin and I were in pre-marital counseling with our pastor, our pastor challenged us to never use the “D” word in our marriage.
Never use the word divorce.
It’s not a threat to hold over your spouses head.
It’s not a joke to make with your spouse or with your buddies.
Divorce is simply not an option.
Now, I see biblically taught that if there is immorality of a certain kind, a breaking of the covenant, it may be permissible if repentance and reconciliation have been pursued.
If you are under dangerous physical or emotional abuse, let’s talk. Get help. Separate yourself from danger.
If your unbelieving spouse is pursuing the divorce, God’s word says that’s on them, you don’t have to stop them.
But for you, divorce is simply not an option.
Listen, if you have listened to Jesus’ teaching on marriage, and thought, man, the standard is so high, it would be better for people just not to get married.
You are in good company, the gospel of Matthew says that when Jesus finished teaching on marriage, the disciples said, “If that’s the case, it is better not to marry.”
And Jesus says, “For some that is best.”
Singleness is certainly not a second class status as we talked about the past two weeks.
It is a God glorifying honorable position to be single with a single hearted devotion to God.
But marriage is a God glorifying position as well for all those God joins together.
But listen, the teaching on biblical marriage shows us that the time to get serious about marriage is before you make the choice to get married.
You know, as a pastor, sometimes someone from the community will contact me wanting me to officiate their wedding.
And anytime they reach out to me, I ask for their email address, and I send them a book on the biblical teachings of marriage that they need to buy and read,
and I invite them to commit to at least six sessions of pre-marital counseling with Robin and me where we discuss the book,
and we give them a lengthy document of questions to fill out about all different aspects of themselves and their relationship.
And if I never hear back from that couple, I know that they just wanted a wedding, they didn’t want to prepare for a marriage.
But for the ones who embrace it and commit, I know that we will stand before God on their wedding day standing on the rock solid foundation of a biblical covenant.
Listen, I’m biblically convinced that a weak view of God and a weak view of marriage which is the one institution God created when He created the man and woman, has made room for so much idolatry, sin, and devastation we experience all around us.
Paul wrote in Ephesians that marriage is the physical picture of Jesus, His gospel, and His church,
Our effectiveness in being witnesses to Christ in our community and our effectiveness in growing into spiritually mature followers of Jesus is directly tied to how we honor and support the one institution God made to represent His covenant love and faithfulness to the world, marriage.
3. Adultery Is Committed When Someone Who Sinfully Divorces Remarries
Jesus’ teachings on divorce and marriage are so radical to the disciples, they ask him more about the matter when they are alone with Him,
And Jesus answers that if a man divorces his wife and marries another, he is committing the sin of adultery.
And if a woman divorces her husband and marries another, she is committing the sin of adultery.
So, for the one who actively pursued the divorce, marrying someone else leads to the sin of adultery, because you have separated what God joined together and attached to someone else.
Let me be abundantly clear, this does not mean that if you are in a second marriage after you sinfully divorced, that your second marriage is cursed or your second marriage is sinful in and of itself.
It means when you came together, there was sin present that needs to be confessed and repented of, so that you can now pursue God’s design for your new marriage.
Whatever marriage you are now in, is the marriage God desires to graciously bless you in as you confess and repent of past sin and pursue God’s design for marriage now.
But the implication of Jesus here is, if you sinfully divorced your spouse, and you cannot for whatever reason pursue reconciliation of your marriage, you should not marry someone else.
Here’s what you must understand, I seek to preach the gospel of Jesus from this pulpit every week, and I encourage you to be personally sharing the gospel with others in your life,
And a key truth in understanding the gospel is that we are all sinners, and we need Jesus’ death in our place to take the punishment for our sin.
But so many times, we are tempted to stay very vague about what it means that we are sinners.
But the Bible is very clear, it means we are idol worshipping, self exalting, dishonorable, murderous, adulterers, who are thieves, liars, and want what others have and we are willing to sin to get it.
And that’s just what the Ten Commandments tell us.
And sometimes it takes speaking to what should be the most important relationship in your life and reminding you of sins in your past to say, yeah, I’m that.
I’m a sinner who has offended and turned away from a Holy God.
I need God’s grace to save me, and I need God’s grace to start seeing things the way He sees them and doing things to align my life to him starting with my marriage.
I need to feel the weight of my sin against the weight of God’s holiness in order to feel the weight of Christ’s sacrifice for my sin.
And when we experience the weightiness of Christ’s sacrifice, it is then we are empowered by His Spirit to live with Jesus as Lord and to humbly repent and pursue Christ’s standards in all of your life, understanding His power is in the experiencing of His mercies that are new every morning.
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