A few weeks ago, John Piper shared an interesting question that he received on his Ask Pastor John podcast. The question came from a student at Texas A&M University. Her name is Sarah. Sarah’s not a believer. She asked,
“Pastor John, thank you for considering this question from me, a college student who didn’t grow up as a Christian, and someone not really convinced that I will become a Christian either. But here I am, surrounded by Christians at school, and I even have a few good Christian friends. I’ve asked them this, and they suggested that I ask you this, too. Here it goes.
“I often wonder why Christians get so hung up on sex and what constitutes what is forbidden or wrong, which is many, if not most sex acts, as far as I can tell, certainly anything and everything outside monogamous, heterosexual marriage. From the outside it looks like a lot of unnecessary prohibitions around something so physical, natural, instinctive, and personal. Can you explain why sex is such a big deal for Christians?”
He responded,
“Sarah, you are probably more right than you know. Christians do make a big deal out of sexual behavior — probably a bigger deal than you realize. So, your question is a good one. Why is sex such a big deal for Christians? Why do Christians preserve the act of sexual intercourse for monogamous heterosexual marriage? Let me try to answer this first with a personal question for you, Sarah, and then a longer explanation from the Bible.
“Sarah, wouldn’t you say that deep inside your female personhood is a desire not to be sexually used by a man simply for his physical gratification? Don’t you sense that giving your most intimate self would be most beautiful and most satisfying if that man cared deeply about you as a person…? In other words, don’t you already have, as it were, written on your heart, the framework of healthy sexuality — namely, being treasured as a person in a committed relationship?
“Now, if that’s true, if I’m not putting words in your mouth, then the answer to your question is that Christians have been given by God, in the Bible, a full-blown theology that accounts for those very feelings you already have (at least in nugget form, in seed form).”
Piper goes on to provide a beautiful biblical framework for Christian sexuality. We’re not going to be able to walk through all that now, but in Matthew 19, Jesus is also asked a question that was extremely countercultural. In answering, he provides a very compressed yet compelling Christian vision of marriage, singleness, and sexuality. So let’s walk through this this morning in Matthew 19:1-12.
Look at where it begins, Matthew 19:1. If you’re not there, you can grab a Bible under the seat in front of you.
“Now when Jesus had finished these sayings…” (Matthew 19:1).
Stop there for a second. That is a marker. You’ll see it all throughout the Gospel of Matthew, indicating that we’re transitioning from show to tell, or in this case, from tell to show. What does that mean?
We’re moving from a formal teaching of Jesus, like the sermon in Matthew 18, into informal teaching and doing. The entire gospel of Matthew is built around this interplay between show/tell. There is tell within show, but it’s not as formal, and it’s not as discursive or sermonic in its nature.
You can see in the fifth major section that we’ve come to as we journey through Matthew, we’re going to begin to see an escalation of conflict, the conflict of the kingdom. Jesus is moving toward Jerusalem, healing and teaching as he goes. He’s moving south, east of the Jordan River, beyond the Jordan, and he’s encountering—as he moves toward Jerusalem—an ever-increasing antagonism from the religious leaders.
I find it interesting that the first area of conflict in this move toward Jerusalem surrounds marriage. Isn’t that interesting? What caused John the Baptist to lose his head? His stand on traditional marriage. Here, Jesus is likewise communicating a similar message.
The reason this is relevant for us today is there are many people, even some Christians today, who say if Christians could just stop talking about controversial moral/social issues, everyone would want to be one. Right? Just steer clear of the big ones, like the beginning of life (abortion), or the end of life (euthanasia), or throughout life (marriage and sexuality), and those kinds of controversial moral social issues. Just stay away from those, and everything will be fine.
In one sense, they have a point. We as believers should not consistently lead with those issues. We should lead with the gospel. That’s who we are. That’s what we’re all about. But as Jesus is illustrating here, it is not possible for us to be faithful to the way of Jesus and not touch on these controversial social/moral issues. You can’t. They’re all integrated with the gospel. What does marriage point to? It points to Christ’s relationship with the church. So we can’t water them down or evade them (repeatedly) and be faithful to the way of Jesus.
So here, you’ll notice in Matthew 19, Jesus refuses to trivialize marriage. Think about that, he’s a single man, but he refuses to trivialize marriage. In Matthew 22, we’re going to see he refuses to idolize marriage, so he comes at it in both directions. Let’s listen in, verse three.
“And Pharisees came up to him and tested him by asking, ‘Is it lawful to divorce one’s wife for any cause?’” (Matthew 19:3)
This was a big debate in that day. Essentially, the debate came down to a phrase lifted from Deuteronomy 24:1 — what happens when a husband finds “some indecency” in his wife? There were two schools of thought back then:
The school of Shammai taught that the word “indecency” referred to infidelity, moral offense, a major offense. Some kind of moral indecency? She’s been unfaithful, and you could divorce her for that, according to the school of Shammai.
But then there was the school Hillel, which held that “indecency” referred to any kind of irritability, a major or minor offense. The rabbis give specific examples, things like cooking (“It’s horrific!”) or finding a more attractive woman. You can remember the difference because Hillel rhymes with “hell.” It’s a very unhelpful view of marriage and divorce.
The Pharisees are testing Jesus, in verse 3, by asking a question that will draw him into the cultural debate. And Jesus’s response is stunning.
We’re going to walk through more points than normal. I know this can’t be a biblical message because it doesn’t have three points. It has six, so buckle your seatbelts. It’s raining out there. You’re not missing anything.
1. Jesus’s answer is biblical.
He quotes the Bible. Look at verse 4.
“Have you not read…” (Matthew 19:4)
Many of us Christians often respond to controversial issues with an emotional experience: “Have you not felt…?” Or a personal revelation, “Have you not heard…?” But Jesus responds by quoting the written Word of God.
There have been some horrific scandals recently, some of you know what I’m talking about, where people have been led to place personal revelation above the written word of God, and that has made them susceptible to false teachers. Let me give you an example.
They will pay a lot of money to go to conferences where a prophet will stand up and call out a name and then an address. And somebody’s like, “That’s me! And that’s my address!” Then they’ll tell you something about your future, and tears flow, and hearts beat, and “God knows my name!” Until it was exposed that this “prophet” was getting this information off of social media and playing with people’s hearts. Horrific.
Paul clarifies this for us in 1 Corinthians 14:1. He says,
“Pursue love, and earnestly desire the spiritual gifts, especially that you may prophesy” (1 Corinthians 14:1).
He goes on to commend speaking in tongues and prophesying. Then he asks this question in verse 36:
“Or was it from you that the word of God came? Or are you the only ones it has reached?” (1 Corinthians 14:36)
Paul is asking, have you received personal revelation? Verse 37,
“If anyone thinks that he is a prophet, or spiritual, he should acknowledge that the things I am writing to you are a command of the Lord. If anyone does not recognize this, he is not recognized” (1 Corinthians 14:37-38).
Wow. Hear me: Paul is not forbidding the gifts. He just commanded us in verse 1, “Pursue them earnestly!” What is he doing? He is placing them under the authoritative, apostolic written Word of God. He’s doing the same thing Jesus just did: “Have you not read…?”
Why is this so important? Brothers and sisters, we are in deep trouble as a church when we crave a personal word more than— Please understand me, I’m not knocking that. Every morning when I get alone with the Lord, he is speaking to me. We want to have sensitive hearts to what the Spirit is saying to us, not minimizing that at all.
But if our minds and hearts are not first and foremost craving God’s word, if we want a personal revelation more than we value the book of Romans or the gospel of Matthew, if we think Romans is too complicated— “I don’t want to waste time trying to understand that.” “Matthew is just so big, and I read it in Sunday school. That’s not exciting, not nearly as exciting as hearing your address called out from the stage.”
As I say this, I want to commend you: A few weeks ago, we had a teacher come in, Dr. Mark Gignilliat, and he kept saying several times, “I can’t believe you guys have over 200 people gathering on a storm-threatening Friday night, Saturday morning, to hear the book of Isaiah expounded.” You are to be commended.
It doesn’t matter how many personal revelations I receive. If my mind is not first and foremost tuned into, shaped by, calibrated to God’s written Word, I won’t know what is true or false. The Spirit is calling me to discern. How? Bathe in the Scriptures. Respond like Jesus responds: “Have you not read…?” Jesus’s answer, first, is biblical.
2. Jesus’s answer is creational.
He highlights God’s original design. Verse 4,
“…he who created them from the beginning made them male and female” (Matthew 19:4b).
Notice, from the beginning, God envisioned a sexual complementarity: two genders, male and female. Not male, female, genderqueer, pangender, two-spirited— no. Jesus is taking us back to creation, before the fall. This is God’s design. However, he is not minimizing the fact that all of us are, in some ways, sexually broken. All of us.
Our sexual brokenness varies. Some of us face same-sex attraction. Some of us face gender dysphoria, an intense conflict between psychology and biology. Some of us tend to objectify our sisters in Christ and battle to keep our thoughts pure. But all of us, until we are with Jesus, are in some ways sexually broken.
Years ago, I met with a man who shared with me that he cannot be intimate with his wife unless she is smoking. That was the first time I’d heard that, so I kept asking questions. After a while, he shared that when he was a young boy, his mother abandoned him. She was a chain smoker.
Nobody understands how this happens, nobody. But there are times when the trauma we experience can become sexualized. Others can experience the same trauma and not experience that. So what is the point? Here’s the point:
Jesus is not ignoring any of this. All of these kinds of brokenness — they’re not new. They were all present in the Greco-Roman world that Jesus inhabited. The point is, we don’t define ourselves by our brokenness. That’s not who we are. Jesus tells us who we are. He’s the one who conveys God’s design for marriage, for singleness, for sexuality, for our identity.
As we move with Jesus toward God’s beautiful design, we are transformed. Sometimes that transformation is instantaneous and miraculous (I’ve seen it), and other times it is a lifelong journey of struggling, praying, and living in community. Jesus’s answer is biblical. His answer is creational.
3. Jesus’s answer is relational.
He combines two to make one. Verse 5, he combines two to make one.
“Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? So they are no longer two but one flesh” (Matthew 19:5-6a).
Jesus is describing a miraculous mathematical miracle: two are added to become one, one new marital bond.
Look at the three key elements of this bond:
“Leave his father and his mother” (Matthew 19:5b).
A new family unit is created. The husband and wife are no longer looking to Dad and Mom as they once did. They continue to honor their parents, but they are no longer under their parents. They have formed a new social bond, and this bond becomes the very foundation of society, all these new social bonds.
“hold fast to his wife” (Matthew 19:5b).
The word “hold fast” means to cleave or cling or to be cemented together. The noun form is the Greek word for glue. This word was used in the ancient world of gluing together a cut where the skin had been severed.
Of course, this bond is not easy or automatic. It can be quite painful to take two and make one. Helen Rowland gets at this when she says, “Marriage is the operation in which the woman’s vanity and the man’s egotism are extracted without anesthetic.” So if you wonder why it’s painful, God is taking two and making one. It’s going to hurt at times. It’s not only a personal bond,
“the two shall become one flesh…” (Matthew 19:5c).
Many non-Christians, like Sarah, are baffled as to why Christians think sex is such a big deal. But when we listen to the words of Jesus, we can’t help but come to this conclusion. The sacred bond is not trivial. It’s not disposable. We’re not dogs in heat. This isn’t just something we bond and then discard. This is sacred.
His answer is biblical, creational, relational, and then number four, covenantal.
4. Jesus’s answer is covenantal.
He warns against separating God’s union. Look at verse 6.
“What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate” (Matthew 19:6b).
God has joined together. Who has joined together? God has joined together.
Some of you who have been around for a while have heard me use the word “compatibilism.” We’re not talking about the secular philosophical version, but the Christian theological version of compatibilism. It basically means divine sovereignty — “God is in charge” — and human responsibility are not mutually exclusive. Marriage, a wedding, illustrates this beautifully.
Yesterday, right here, we had a wedding. Pastor Tim married Sarah and Josiah (and he did a great job). In one sense, Tim is uniting a couple. In another sense, the couple is uniting themselves. They are freely choosing to get married. In another sense, the parents/family are here to witness and support this union. But who ultimately is joining this couple? God. God is joining this couple. That’s what Jesus is saying.
This is one of the big differences between a mere human contract and a divine covenant. When I look back many, many decades ago, Karen (my wife) and I went through a marital implosion about year two and three. Things were really bad.
I’ve often wondered, if we viewed our marriage like a human contract, would we be married today? I don’t think we would, because we were miserable, and when you’re miserable, you begin to imagine things, right? “Maybe I married the wrong person.” “Maybe God wasn’t at my wedding.”
We got married in the late 80s. The Cold War was still going on. We were under the threat of nuclear annihilation. The first Intifada was happening in Gaza and the West Bank. God was really busy with a lot of things going on! He certainly didn’t have free time to come to my wedding. So maybe it just got past him, and I married the wrong person.
I vividly remember when the Spirit made it clear to me: “I was there, Peter.” And by the way, you always marry the wrong person, because we’re all being transformed and we have a ways to go. What difference does that make?
I think it makes a huge difference when I know in my heart, when I began to realize, “God, you’re right here. You’re doing a work in my heart. You’re doing a work in her heart. You’re up to good things. You weren’t absent at my wedding. You aren’t absent in this sanctification process, as painful as it can be at times.”
“What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.”
Covenantal.
5. Jesus’s answer is internal.
Jesus’s answer is internal. He exposes their hearts. Look at verse 7.
“They said to him, ‘Why then did Moses command one to give a certificate of divorce and to send her away?’” (Matthew 19:7)
Here, the Pharisees are misrepresenting Deuteronomy 24 when they say “Moses commanded divorce.” Notice Jesus’s response in verse 8.
“He said to them, ‘Because of your hardness of heart Moses [didn’t command, he] allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning [second time Jesus has gone back to creational design] it was not so. And I say to you: whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery” (Matthew 19:8-9).
Jesus here is affirming the same thing we heard back in the Sermon on the Mount regarding marriage and divorce. What he adds here is the core problem that caused this breakup, and it is “hardness of heart.”
Jesus is crystal clear that, aside from death, the actual cause of divorce is always hardness of heart. He has no category for incompatibility: “We just drifted apart.” One or both hearts have to become hardened in order for a divorce to take place. Sexual immorality could be viewed as hardness of heart. Paul adds abandonment in 1 Corinthians 7 as a form of hardness of heart.
This is why I love Paul’s last statement at the end of Ephesians 4, before Ephesians 5 (when he talks about marriage). Look at this, Ephesians 4:32,
“Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you” (Ephesians 4:32).
This is where we ended last week. Look at the center: tenderhearted. Years ago, I put this together because I noticed, when my wife and I were having a discussion, how quickly I moved out of the circle of kindness. Whatever it means to be married, it means to be kind, tender-hearted, forgiving, as we’ve been forgiven. But we all have a tendency to go to one of the four corners of unkindness.
These words are mine, but the original concepts come from the research of Dr. John Gottman. He calls these “the four horsemen of the apocalypse.” Not a believer, but he says, “You want to guarantee the doom of your marriage? Go to these four corners consistently.” Let’s look at them quickly.
Top left, denounce. It’s when we start attacking the person rather than the problem. “You are so much like your…” Hmm. Or top right, defend. That’s my favorite corner. I love to debate. I begin excusing, blaming, rather than listening and responding with humility. Bottom left, depart. Some people would never argue, but they evaporate, withdraw, or disengage emotionally or physically. Bottom right, demean, to express disgust. Eye rolling. “You make me sick.” “I don’t have time for you.” All of us have one, usually we have two, favorite corners.
One of the reasons, and a lot of you know, I’ve covered this before. I’m going to keep covering it. How many of you have this on your refrigerator? Oh good. How many of you are living this? No. I want to keep going over this because I notice, because it’s so simple, I can feel myself in a discussion moving toward a corner. It’s like, “Hubbard, whoa, get back in the circle of kindness.”
Do you know you can disagree strongly and do it kindly with a tender heart? It’s beautiful, but it’s not natural. It’s the Spirit. So, I think it’s significant that Jesus is saying, you want to destroy your marriage? Let your heart get hard. Keep it tender, tenderhearted, be kind.
6. Jesus’s answer is vocational.
His answer is biblical, creational, relational, covenantal, internal, and now vocational. He elevates our calling. The word “vocation” simply has to do with calling. This final point Jesus makes is prompted by the disciples’ response to his last statement about marriage and divorce. Verse 10:
“The disciples said to him, ‘If such is the case of a man with his wife, it is better not to marry” (Matthew 19:10).
By the way, one of the signs that you’ve actually heard the words of Jesus is you’re like, “I’m out. That sounds miraculous.” If marriage is a permanent bond that cannot be broken apart from sexual immorality and abandonment, the disciples essentially say, “I don’t want to go in if I can’t go out.”
It’s kind of a situational awareness: “I’m not going in there if there isn’t an escape hatch.” Divorce, in their minds, is the escape hatch, and Jesus just shut the door. If I say “I do,” can I say, “I don’t?” Verse 11:
“But he said to them, ‘Not everyone can receive this saying, but only those to whom it is given” (Matthew 19:11).
“To whom it is given.” That’s the language of calling. We’ve seen this before in Matthew, when Jesus explained why he uses parables back in Matthew 13:11.
“And he answered them, ‘To you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been given’” (Matthew 13:11).
He goes on to link the capacity to receive with the condition of our hearts again (13:15), they’ve “grown dull.” Jesus is essentially saying, if you approach marriage like you approach Amazon—”I’m just going to buy it because I can always return it.” “I can exchange her for a different one,” or him”—then Jesus is saying your heart is not ready to hear this call, to receive this gift.
Marriage is not an exchangeable union, so then Jesus illustrates with an alternative calling (verse 12). He talks about eunuchs.
I know you’re going to be sad about this, but originally, before the storm a few weeks ago, I was going to do a whole message on eunuchs. Wouldn’t that have been fun? Unfortunately, I had to compress the two messages to catch us up. Mmm, so sad. Verse 12:
“For there are eunuchs who have been so from birth, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by men, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Let the one who is able to receive this receive it” (Matthew 19:12).
What are eunuchs? In the ancient world, eunuchs were generally men without testicles. They were valued greatly in empires like Assyria and Persia for their purity and loyalty.
I know this is weird, but I’m enjoying it. I’m reading a book by Eckart Frahm (who is a professor of Assyriology at Yale) on Assyria. But in the midst of this, he describes a decree that was archaeologically discovered at the city of Asher. Asher is the ancient ruins of the city that the people of Assyria grew out of.
In these ruins, they found a decree that made clear that if any palace official gave permission for a man to be in the private quarters of the king’s palace where the harem of the king resided, that palace official was to have his foot cut off for overstepping into an area he shouldn’t or they shouldn’t be in. Why? Because only the eunuchs could be in that area. Why? Because the kings trusted the eunuchs to take care of the harem.
They were known for their so-called purity.
Secondly, they were known for their loyalty.
Eunuchs were often trusted with high levels of government responsibility because it was reasoned that they would not be tempted to build their own dynasty. They couldn’t. So eunuchs, in some ways, were known for their purity and their loyalty.
Jesus mentions three kinds of eunuchs here. He’s not commending these three, he’s observing: the natural (eunuchs by birth), the unnatural (eunuchs by force, those who have been physically castrated), and the volitional (eunuchs by choice).
Let’s be clear: Jesus is not commending severing body parts. Why? Colossians 2:23 makes it clear that severity to the body has no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh. The battle is more comprehensive than merely physical. He is talking about a different kind of purity and loyalty.
Origen of Alexandria wrote a commentary on the Gospel of Matthew back in 246 to 248 AD. In that, he talks about the eunuchs, and then he describes a kind of spiritual castration. Look what he says:
“This happens when, for the sake of the kingdom of heaven, they cut off the desire for physical things by means of the very sharp Word.”
So he’s not here talking about a knife. He’s talking about the Word of God calling someone to a life of purity and loyalty in the kingdom. This is similar to the words Paul wrote to both married and singles in 1 Thessalonians 4:3,
“For this is the will of God, your sanctification [that means you’re being set apart to God]: that you abstain from sexual immorality; that each one of you know how to control his own body in holiness and honor, not in the passion of lust like the Gentiles who do not know God—”
Do you see? He’s saying it’s not going to make sense to them.
“…that no one transgress and wrong his brother [or sister] in this matter, because the Lord is an avenger in all these things, as we told you beforehand and solemnly warned you. [Here it is, the language of calling:] For God has not called us for impurity, but in holiness. Therefore whoever disregards this, disregards not man but God, who gives his Holy Spirit to you” (1 Thessalonians 4:3-8).
So whether we’re married or whether we are single, we are being invited into a story that goes all the way back to the beginning, and all the way forward, that is much bigger than us. That story shapes how we think about marriage, singleness, and sexuality.
If our non-Christian friends can look at our lives and see that we live the same way in this area that they live, that is confusing. That’s one of the reasons I mentioned the example we started with, with Sarah.
I think it’s so interesting that Sarah noticed in her Christian friends at college a completely different view of marriage, singleness, purity, and sexuality. Many who claim the name of Christ today are doing everything possible to erase that difference. Let me give you one example.
A megachurch pastor in Maryland recently explained that sexual intimacy before and outside of marriage is biblically fine. The argument he uses is the same argument that—I remember, a little less than 15 years ago—was created to support the LGBTQ movement among Christians. I remember interacting with some of the first proponents of this and thinking, “This isn’t going to stay there. It’s going to affect everything.” And sure enough, it is.
The basic argument is this: the word “porneia,” which is translated “sexual immorality” in verse 9, only refers to prostitution and pederasty. That’s it, which is so interesting because those are the two areas that our culture would agree are wrong.
Somehow, we found a way to say that only what the culture agrees with is wrong, and everything else that Christians have — for 2,000 years — clearly understood from the Word of God as being wrong, is now okay, suddenly.
The word “porneia” means much more than this pastor is claiming it means. But essentially, he’s arguing that if your marriage is difficult/boring, exchange it. If your desires don’t align with the words of Jesus, Jesus is wrong. Your desires aren’t.
He ends his argument this way: “Understand that God will give you confirmation in your spirit and heart that you will experience better.” Do you notice the location of the authority? It’s in our hearts, rather than where Jesus began: “Have you not read…?” Let’s end where we began.
The very end of John Piper’s response to Sarah, that unbeliever who had wondered why Christians believe what they believe, Piper writes,
“We don’t have a few arbitrary dos and don’ts. We have a beautiful picture of the love of God embracing an undeserving people, providing them with everlasting happiness and a kind of marriage relationship with Jesus Christ, along with all the exquisite joy that represents. And in the meantime, what we do with our bodies ought to represent that precious reality.”
My call today was to communicate what God’s Word says to you, no matter how hard or how easy. That’s my job. But I understand everything I said is controversial. And on a personal level, even more, is extremely sensitive and complicated. So, a couple of things: If you feel anything I’ve said is unbiblical, please feel free to email me. I welcome pushback. Second, if you are uncertain as to what the Bible says about something related to this, you can go to our website. Under “Beliefs and Values,” we have a statement. It’s very concise on sexuality, marriage, remarriage… That kind of thing. Divorce.
If you want to talk to someone, we have a lot of elders and pastors who would love to talk through these very sensitive, difficult areas. If you desire counseling, please contact our counseling ministry.
Men, if you’re battling with purity, the Conquer series is amazing, super helpful.
If you desire prayer, we’ll have people up here and after the service who would love to pray with you. Let’s pray.
Jesus, you said that not everyone can receive this, but only those to whom it has been given. It was controversial back then, and it’s controversial today. So we, your people, are asking you to make our hearts willing to receive. Please give us what we need. Not always what we want to hear, but give us what we need, and we know it is life and love and joy and freedom. We thank you in Jesus’s name, amen.
