Mark 10:1-12
What God Joined Together
1Then Jesus left that place and went into the region of Judea, beyond the Jordan. Again the crowds came to Him and He taught them, as was His custom.
2Some Pharisees came to test Him. “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?” they inquired.
3“What did Moses command you?” He replied.
4They answered, “Moses permitted a man to write his wife a certificate of divorce and send her away.”
5But Jesus told them, “Moses wrote this commandment for you because of your hardness of heart.
6However, from the beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female.’
7‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife,
8and the two will become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two, but one flesh.
9Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate.”
10When they were back inside the house, the disciples asked Jesus about this matter.
11So He told them, “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery against her.
12And if a woman divorces her husband and marries another man, she commits adultery.”
Berean Standard Bible
Some Pharisees come to Jesus with a question about divorce, and Mark tells us their motive before he tells us their words. They came to test him. This is not a man in trouble asking for help. It is a trap, set in public, with a crowd standing there.
Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?
Jesus does not answer it. He asks them a question back: what did Moses command you? They tell him, and they tell him correctly, that Moses permitted a man to write a certificate of divorce and send her away, and the law is written down in Deuteronomy where they say it is.
Then he says something about that law they were not expecting. Moses wrote it for them because of the hardness of their hearts. He does not deny the law is in the book. He tells them why it is in the book. It was never God's picture of marriage, it was God making a rule for people who were already breaking each other, so that a woman sent away would at least not be left with nothing.
Then he goes back past Moses altogether, to the first pages of the story. God made them male and female. A man leaves his father and mother, is united to his wife, and the two become one flesh. Two sentences out of Genesis, set beside each other, and he treats those as the answer to the question instead of treating the permission as the answer.
So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate.
Later, back inside the house, the disciples ask him about it again in private, which is often how Mark shows us that something landed hard. He says it to them a second time without softening a word.
One more thing, said plainly. Mark records this exchange without the qualifications that appear elsewhere in the Bible, and tonight we are staying with what Mark says. He says God made marriage to be one thing that lasts, and that a rule allowing an end to one was God dealing with hearts that had already gone hard.
How We Know
This teaching was circulating before Mark wrote it down. In 1 Corinthians 7:10-11 Paul gives a command about a wife not separating from her husband and a husband not divorcing his wife, and attributes it to the Lord rather than to himself. Most scholars place this Gospel in the decade before Jerusalem fell in AD 70, and Paul's letter to Corinth well before that. On that reckoning the same teaching is already in writing years earlier, carried by a man who says he received it rather than composed it.
The question the Pharisees ask also belongs to a real dispute. Deuteronomy 24:1 permits a certificate of divorce for a man who finds some indecency in his wife, and what that phrase covered was argued over.
- Britannica, "Gospel According to Mark," on the dating of this Gospel.
Questions
1 Mark tells us why the Pharisees asked this question. What was the reason?
AnswerTo test him. They were not looking for help with anything. They were hoping he would say something in public that they could use against him.
2 Jesus said Moses wrote that rule because of hard hearts. What does that tell you about the rule?
AnswerThat it was never the design. It was God making a rule for people who were already hurting each other, so that a woman sent away was not left with nothing. God working around damage, rather than describing what marriage was for.
3 Name a promise somebody in this house keeps even when keeping it is inconvenient. What makes a promise hold?
AnswerAnything honest counts. Jesus goes back past every law to Genesis, where a man leaves, is joined to his wife, and the two become one flesh. He treats marriage as a joining God does rather than an arrangement people manage, which is why he says no man should take it apart.
4 Some families reading this have been through a divorce. What does the passage say to them, and what does it not say?
AnswerIt says plainly what God made marriage to be, and it does not pretend divorce is what he wanted. It does not say that somebody who has been through one is out of his reach. He is answering men who came to trap him, not handing down a verdict on a person who has been hurt.
What This Means for Us
God made marriage to last, and he says so without flinching. Softening that would not help anybody at this table.
Now the other thing, and it is every bit as true. If this family has been through a divorce, or if you have walked through one yourself, this passage is not God looking at you with a hard face. Divorce came into the world the way every broken thing came into it, and God's answer to broken things has never once been to walk away from the people standing in the wreckage. He came toward them.
Both of those belong out loud in this house: what he made marriage to be, and that he is not finished with anybody sitting here.
Prayer
Father, thank you for telling us the truth about what marriage was made to be, even when the truth is hard to hear. And thank you that you never stopped loving people whose lives did not go that way. Where we are broken, come toward us. Where we are whole, keep us. Amen.