The following sermon was presented by the Reverend John W. Howe, Rector of Truro Episcopal Church in Fairfax, Virginia, on October 31, 1982. The title is God's Purpose or His Permission, and the scripture reference is Mark chapter 10, verses 2 through 9. A reading from Genesis chapter 2, verses 18 through 24 is also included. 

A reading from the second chapter of the book of Genesis, beginning at the 18th verse. Then the Lord God said, It is not good that the man should be alone. I will make him a helper, fit for him.

So out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the air and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. The man gave names to all cattle and to the birds of the air and to every beast of the field.

But for the man there was not found a helper fit for him. So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept, took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib which the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman, and brought her to the man.

Then the man said, This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called woman because she was taken out of man. Therefore, a man leaves his father and his mother and cleaves to his wife and they become one flesh.

The Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. The Holy Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ according to Mark. I'm reading from chapter 10 beginning at the second verse. Some Pharisees came up to Jesus in order to test Him and asked, Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?

he answered them what did Moses command you they said Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of divorce and put her away but Jesus said to them for your hardness of heart he wrote this commandment but from the beginning of creation God made them male and female and for this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined 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 put asunder.

The Gospel of the Lord. Before we even get to the substance of the matter, the discussion of marriage and divorce per se, I want you to notice something. I want you to notice that like so many of the Pharisees' questions, this one was not asked in the pursuit of truth, but in an attempt to entrap.

It says they came seeking to test Jesus. Literally, to put Him to the test. They came trying to entrap Him.

And that was their want. They did that with some frequency. I'm reminded of another question that began exactly the same way.

Is it lawful? to pay taxes to Caesar or not? You remember that either way Jesus answered, it looked as if he was going to be in big trouble.

If he said, yes, you can go ahead and pay your taxes, then he would lose the support of his Jewish constituency who would see him as a traitor to the Romans. And if he said, no, don't pay taxes, then the Romans themselves would come crashing down upon him as a seditionist, an insurrectionist. Only Jesus wouldn't be trapped by that question.

You remember the story? He said, give me a coin, held it up. Whose image is on this coin?

And they all said, Caesar's, obviously. And he said, well then, let me tell you, you render to Caesar what is his, that which has his image stamped upon it, and give to God what is his, By implication, that which has his image stamped upon it. Did you ever catch that?

What is it that has God's image stamped upon it? It's you and me. You go ahead and give Caesar his money, give God yourself.

And Jesus moves the whole discussion to another plane, another level altogether. He refuses to be ensnared or trapped on that particular dilemma. But the Pharisees kept coming back.

They kept trying to trap him. And so on this particular occasion, they come with another question. It starts exactly the same way.

Tell us, teacher, is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife? You need to understand that the Pharisees knew perfectly well what the answer to that question was. It was not only lawful, it was extremely easy.

the Jews in Jesus' day operated by a law that is still in effect in many parts of the Middle East many of the Arab folk operate by this same law today all a man has to do if he wants to get rid of his wife is holler out into a public meeting somewhere and say in the hearing of others I divorce you, I divorce you, I divorce you and that's the end of it not only lawful but very easy now mind you the woman didn't have the same privilege if she wanted to return the compliment but they knew the answer to the question it's not only lawful it's very easy and so you might well wonder why in the world are they asking well it's perfectly obvious that the Pharisees had been hounded they had been haunted by this time by the sort of teaching that Jesus was doing up one side of Palestine and down the other. The sort of high standards that he was insisting upon. The call to holiness.

The call to righteousness. The call, as we heard last week. I'm sure they heard about last week's sermon.

Chop off your hand if it offends you. Not my sermon, his. Maybe they heard about mine, I don't know.

I'm sure they'd heard about the Sermon on the Mount by this time. Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the Pharisees, you're never going to make it into heaven. Can you put yourself in the boots of the Pharisee for just a minute?

Your righteousness exceed us? That's not possible. So they're going to trap Him if they can.

Everything Jesus is saying is a threat to the Pharisees. If Jesus says, yes, it's lawful to divorce your wife, then you see what they've done? They've pulled the rug out from under those high standards.

Here Jesus is going around talking about the sanctity of marriage. He's talking about God calling a man and a woman into a relationship that is unending. If he turns around and agrees with the law, then he's been undercut.

Where is his credibility from this point on? On the other hand, if he says, no, it is not lawful, well, then they've got him disagreeing with Moses. And that's fairly serious.

Since he says, I haven't come to set aside the law, not a jot or tittle will be changed until it's all accomplished. Gotcha. One way or the other.

Pharisees are playing a very deadly game at this point. You need to understand that. With the question about taxes, they're trying to ensnare Jesus in Roman law.

But with this question about marriage and divorce, they're trying to set Him up against Jewish law, against the Scriptures. It's absolutely clear to the Pharisees what the implication of Jesus' teaching really is. He's establishing a standard higher than that of the Scriptures.

Let me tell you, that is one threat to the Pharisaic mentality. I don't know if you've ever thought this through before. We tend to think of Pharisees as people who were really, truly righteous.

But the fact of the matter is, virtually every single one of their questions was an attempt to establish the minimum standard. How much do I have to do in order to qualify? That much, no more, I'm safe.

tell me Jesus if somebody slaps me on the one cheek do I have to turn the other one also? now look I'm prepared to walk a mile that's enough isn't it? a second mile?

if I've forgiven my brother seven times surely on the eighth time I can clobber him seven times? if I pay my tithes I don't really have to support my elderly parents do I? Every single question is a matter of how much do I have to do to get by?

What's the lowest standard that will enable me to escape? And Jesus is not interested in that. Jesus is consistently talking about a standard higher than the scripture.

You read through the Sermon on the Mount, and you'll see over and over and over again, he says, you have heard that it is said, but I say to you, don't think for a moment, he's lowering the standards. Every single time he's raising them. Because he's not interested in a lowest common denominator kind of Christianity.

He's interested in talking about going as far as you can go with God. That's the issue. And so, they come to him, And they pose this specific question, thinking they're going to at last get him into a trap.

He's going to be over against Scripture. He's going to be disagreeing with Moses. And once again, Jesus eludes them all together.

He says, alright, you've asked, and I'll tell you straight out. But it's not a matter of my authority against Moses. It's a matter of God's original purpose in creation over against his own condescension to your sinfulness.

What's he saying? For your hardness of heart, for your hardness of heart, Moses, acting under the inspiration of God's Spirit, did in fact establish a commandment that says under certain conditions it is legally permissible for a man to divorce his wife. Yes, that's the law, but that's not God's highest and best.

What are you interested in? Are you interested in what you can slip by with? Or do you want God's highest and best?

Do you follow me? He's asking a completely different question. God's highest and best, God's purpose in establishing marriage at creation at the very beginning of the story is that a man and a woman would be joined together not with a money back guarantee return within 30 years if not completely satisfied but in a way that nothing short of death itself could dissolve that union that's God's purpose are you interested in God's purpose or are you interested in His permission to do something else?

You've got to ask the right question here. What do you want? Do you want God's purpose or do you want His permission?

That's a pattern that applies to all sorts of things. We're talking about marriage but it applies to all sorts of things. It's remarkable to me how many instances you'll run up against where God gives you your choice.

You can have His purpose Or you can have His permission to go do it some other way. God very seldom forces His will upon people. You can have His highest and best, or He'll permit you to settle for something far, far less than that.

The choice is up to you, and it's the choice that's up to me. I can just hear you saying, Yes, but, yes, but. Aren't there certain circumstances in which a divorce is warranted?

You can ask the question any way you like. It's the same question, and Jesus has already given you the answer. Yes.

Yes. But every one of those circumstances is tainted by sin. Every single one of them is tainted by sin.

Every single one of them is settling for something other than God's highest and best. I need to acknowledge that in any congregation these days, you're going to find an awful lot of folks who have already gone through the collapse and failure of a marriage and an awful lot of folks who have already gone through divorce. And the last thing in the world that I would want to do this morning is lay a guilt trip upon all the pain that you've already suffered to this point.

Somebody has well said, you can't unscramble eggs. And I'm not going to try to. but if you'd let me speak for just a moment not to those who have already gone through that tragedy but to any among us who might be considering it stick with me for just a moment the question is not what can I justify what is legally permissible what will God allow me to do that is not the question That's the Pharisees' question.

I hope your question is, what would please God? What is God's highest and best? Completely different question.

In this area of marriage, why did God give you your wife or your husband, if He's given you a wife or husband? Why did He do that? What's God's purpose in that?

How many of you know that it is not because he's given you the person that is perfectly suited to you? Does anybody know that? You are a much more honest congregation than the 9 o'clock crowd.

One man raised his hand at that point. The whole rest of them are a bunch of liars. I noticed that my wife was the first to get her hand up there.

I frankly cannot imagine anything more grotesque than being given another person who never irritated me. And I have not been. Neither has she.

Can you imagine anything worse than somebody who never disagreed with you? Never challenged you, no matter how dumb the comment was. Yeah, I agree.

Yeah. Never gave you an opportunity to be a servant. Because that other person was always catering to you.

Never gave you an opportunity to grow in patience, in understanding, in compassion. That might be fun for a weekend at Disney World, but that is fantasy land. God's purpose in giving you your spouse, if He has so favored you, is to give you one person above all others with whom you enter into a spiritual covenant, a partnership in which you begin to rub each other's rough edges off.

And you keep doing it, and you keep doing it until in more and more areas of your life you get shiny, smooth, and begin to reflect the loveliness of Jesus. That's His purpose. You say, boy, you don't know my wife.

I know mine. Isn't it incredible how little things irritate us. I can't stand it when she squeezes a tube of toothpaste in the middle and then she leaves the cap off the tube.

That irritates the hell out of me. That's exactly what it's supposed to do. marriages die over where you leave the bath mat do you know that?

over those stockings hanging in the shower stall and gentlemen over your dirty socks on the floor you know let's keep it even when you confess maybe you wouldn't confess but in your heart of hearts when you know something is irritating you you know that tells me a whole lot more about you than it does about your wife you see if you had arrived in that area of your personality it wouldn't have irritated you but because it irritates you it tells me you've got a little bit more growing to do in that particular area If that tube of toothpaste irritates you, you've got some growing to do because if you had arrived, you'd see that as an occasion to serve, to bless. Do you follow what I'm saying? And God has given you somebody not perfectly suited to cater to your every whim, to affirm you no matter how obnoxious you are, but to irritate the hell out of you, to make you more like Jesus.

After the last service, one lady prayed a prayer, thank you God for giving me such an abrasive husband to make me the gem that I am. Marilyn Reardon. I don't want you to mistake the overall pattern here, okay?

We're talking about a specific, but again, it applies to all sorts of other things. All sorts of other things. Do you realize that in our society now, we have not quite, but almost reached 50% divorce rate?

And I say to every couple that I counsel before they get married, you understand that that's like playing Russian roulette with every other barrel loaded. And that doesn't even speak about all the other marriages that are so sick that probably for the protection of everybody there almost ought to be a separation. Who thinks that they can beat the odds?

Eternity Magazine did a survey some time ago. I'd like to just mention this to you and put it in the back of your mind and let God speak to you out of it. Eternity Magazine did a survey of those Christian couples that do three things.

One, they pray together daily. Two, they read scripture together regularly. And three, they worship in church together weekly.

And do you know what the rate of divorce was among such couples? It was less than one in 1600. Comparison to one out of two.

I say to couples, if I could give you a formula that would virtually guarantee the success of your marriage, cost you maybe 15 minutes a day, would it be worth it? Obviously, those things by themselves aren't going to make that kind of a difference. They're symptoms, they're indications of the desire of that couple to involve the Lord Jesus Christ in the heart of their marriage and in the very foundation of their family.

And that's what makes the difference. You know, the oyster is irritated by sand that gets inside his shell. It gets under his skin.

It begins to cut away at him. You know what it does? It produces blood.

And God transforms it into a pearl. And that's what God wants to do in our lives with those things that irritate us. Transform our irritations into pearls.

Pearls of great price. Don't miss the pattern. The Pharisee says, how can I get out of this?

And the disciple says, Lord, transform it into a pearl. Let's bow our heads together. Perhaps the area of your struggle has nothing to do with marriage.

But there's some other area in which God would be speaking to you and the question would again be, do you want His purpose or permission to do something else? Take your choice. Perhaps God is speaking to you about your marriage.

Lord, we'd pray for each other in our marriages. Lord, give us the courage to allow You to come in and transform hurts and irritations into things of great beauty. Give us the desire, Lord, to settle for nothing but Your highest and best.

We ask it in the name of Jesus, who is Lord. Amen.