Family in the Kingdom (Matthew 19:1-12)

This week we're going to talk about a passage that's often misinterpreted and misused. Matthew 19 starts out with Jesus' hard teaching on marriage and divorce. Living in a time where people get married for all sorts of reasons (mostly wrong), define marriage in a variety of ways (mostly wrong), and break up marriages through a multitude of means (mostly wrong), it's hard to lay out the Biblical teaching on marriage and divorce without it getting somewhat personal. As the old saying goes, when it comes to this topic, "the preacher's gone to meddling."

With that said, it's helpful to know there are two keys to understanding this passage that are often overlooked. First, it's brought up in the context of Jesus' teaching in Matthew 18 on church discipline and generous forgiveness -- probably because marriage figures prominently in the application of those teachings. And second, it's brought up by the Pharisees as a way of testing Jesus. They had a disagreement amongst themselves on the topic of divorce, and they were trying to get Jesus to take sides.

However, Jesus undercuts the Pharisees' divorce debate by exposing the false assumptions underlying what they believed about marriage. And, of course, He equally challenges our society's (mostly wrong) views of marriage and divorce the same way -- by exposing the false assumptions underlying what we believe. And what are those false assumptions? Come Sunday to find out!

See you then, Dr. Dave