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Father, as we come to your Word, we pray that it would be a light – to show us you and to show us ourselves as you see us. In Jesus’ name, Amen

Please have a seat, and would you turn in the Bibles straight away to page 824 and Matthew 19. Once you’re there, you’ll see that the Bible translators have put in the heading; ‘Teaching about divorce’. Which isn’t a good heading because although this teaching by Jesus is prompted by a question about divorce, it’s about far more than divorce. It’s about how we understand ourselves as men and women, and it’s about marriage and singleness and how both can be lived for God. So in your mind, please cross out that heading, and replace it with the heading for this series – which is: ‘Jesus on men and women’. So, let’s get straight into it. Look down to Matthew 19.1-3:

Now when Jesus had finished these sayings, he went away from Galilee and entered the region of Judea beyond the Jordan. And large crowds followed him, and he healed them there. And Pharisees came up to him and tested him by asking, “Is it lawful to divorce one's wife for any cause?”

Which brings us to our first point tonight, which is:

1. The world we live in

And when it comes to this area of the relationship between the sexes, the world we live in is often sad and painful. Just look at Matthew 19.3 again:

And Pharisees came up to [Jesus] and tested him by asking, “Is it lawful to divorce one's wife for any cause?”

And when you think about it, the attitude behind that question is profoundly selfish. In fact, it’s heartless, because the attitude behind it is men saying ‘A relationship with a woman is for me and my benefit, and I’ll end it the moment it stops being what I want and meeting my needs.’ In other words, it’s men treating women as commodities. And the Pharisees did teach that a man could divorce his wife simply because she no longer pleased him, and that he then had the right to re-marry someone he preferred. But needless to say, they didn’t teach that women could do the same to their husbands. So this wasn’t just men treating women as commodities. It was also men failing to treat women as equals. Both of which are characteristic sins of men. And both of which Jesus rebukes here and elsewhere in his teaching – which is radical in the way he affirms women and their equality with men. Moving to today, the sad news is that we now have a culture of divorce very like the one in Matthew 19.3 because the new, no-fault divorce law allows someone to end a marriage without giving any reason at all.

The good news is that much more equality has been secured for women, thanks to what feminism has contended for. But where we’ve ended up is a culture where men and women can now equally say ‘A relationship is for me and my benefit, and I’ll end it the moment it stops being what I want and meeting my needs.’ So we’re all encouraged to be treating each other as commodities. And the far end of that is the hook-up culture and pornography, where there’s no actual relationship going on at all. That’s the world we live in and yet, deep down we want something very different. We want to love and be loved. We want faithfulness. We want relationships that last, that we can build our lives on, and that’s what Jesus wants for us. So next point: Jesus says

2. We need to recognise created reality

Look at how Jesus answered these Pharisees (Matthew 19.4-6):

He answered, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘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. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.”

We’ll unpack what Jesus says about marriage next week. But this week, we need to slow down on what he says about creation because the Pharisees in Matthew 19.3 were treating marriage as just a human thing – that human beings can make and break at will, that human beings can even redefine. Because when you think about it, behind Matthew 19.3 is a complete redefinition of marriage from being for life to being for as long as I want it. So really, they believed they could create their own reality when it came to marriage. But look at Matthew 19.4:

[Jesus] answered, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female”

In other words, Jesus says there’s an already-created reality which we need to recognise and accept and live within for our good. Let’s look a bit deeper into that. So, Matthew 19.4, Jesus says:

Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female

And he’s quoting what you can read back in Genesis 1. So would you turn back in the Bibles to page 1. Now someone who’s not a Christian might say at this point ‘But Genesis is ancient and outdated; and its author was conditioned by a culture that was patriarchal and treated women unequally and knew nothing of what we now know about sexual orientation and gender and so on. So how can you possibly take your beliefs from Genesis?’ And part of the answer is that Jesus quoted it Have you not read…? He says, and then quotes Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 as true and authoritative. So if I believe Jesus rose from the dead, which I do, and if I therefore believe his claim to be God’s Son become man, which I do, then I’m committed to believing his teaching; otherwise I’m saying God can be wrong, and that includes his teaching that the Old Testament is true and authoritative. But in this bit of Matthew 19, Jesus also teaches why the Old Testament is true and authoritative. So Matthew 19.4-5 says:

[Jesus] answered, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning [in other words God his Father] made them male and female, and said [open quotation marks]

So Jesus is saying: what comes next is God’s words. And what comes next is: Genesis 2.24. So just turn over to page 2 and look at Genesis 2.24.
Which says:

Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.

Which is not one of those verses which go, ‘This is what God says…’ open quotation marks for direct speech from God. It’s simply the words of the human writer of Genesis. And yet, Jesus says they’re also God’s words. Or to put it better, they’re God’s words through human words, as a result of God guiding the human writer to write exactly what he wanted written (and to use the jargon, that’s called the ‘inspiration’ of the Bible) which Jesus taught, and which I accept on Jesus’ authority. So that answers the criticism that Genesis (and the rest of the Bible) is ancient and outdated, because since it’s God’s word through human words, and since God doesn’t change what he thinks, it’s completely up to date. And it also answers the criticism that Genesis (and the rest of the Bible) is just a product of the human writer’s time and culture, because God was able to guide the human writers to write what reflected his mind rather than just the mind of their time and culture. Which is why what Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 say about the equality of men and women, and their companionship in marriage, was unique among the other cultures at the time. So that’s why I take it Genesis is true and authoritative. So back to page 1 and look down to Genesis 1.1:

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

Then skip to Genesis 1.26-27:

Then God said, “Let us make man [ie, mankind – men and women] in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them [which is what Jesus quotes].

So the first thing to say from that is that our sex (whether we’re male or female) is not the most important thing about us, and nor is whatever male-female relationship we may have going right now or in the future. The most important thing about each one of us here is that we’re made in the image of God. So I have a friend called Al, whose son joined our church family last year and who’s uncannily like him – not just in looks but in; his laugh, his mannerisms, his walk, you name it. He’s the spitting image of his Dad: look at him and you see Al reflected. Partly because he was jointly created by Al – which is why he looks like him, but mostly because of his relationship with Al – which is why he acts like him. And each one of us here was made to be the image of God – by living in relationship with God, so that we reflect God in the way we live. And that relationship is our number one relationship. So it’s the number one place to find our identity and answer the question, ‘Who am I?’ I’m God’s creation. I’m here because he wanted me, as the unique person I am, to be here. When did that thought last amaze you?

And it’s also the number one place to find our value. Now of course other peoples’ love gives us value, and our work and achievements give us value. But they can never give us the full value we really need. And if they’re the only place we look for value, we’ll end up putting too much pressure on our human relationships, and too much pressure on ourselves to work and achieve. Instead we need to look to God for what we’re worth. And he thought you were so worth it that he made you. And he thought you were so worth it that he gave his Son to die for your forgiveness, to bring you back into this relationship with him that we all need. When did that thought last amaze you?

And it’s also the number one place to find our purpose. I was once emailed by a single woman in our church family who said ‘I’m not married, I don’t have kids, so I don’t have any of those things to live for like most people do. I just don’t have any purpose.’ And I was really saddened by that because it said that the message she’d picked up was that your real purpose is to get married and have kids – which isn’t true. And because it said we hadn’t helped her to see that whether we’re single or married, with kids or without, our purpose is to live for God and reflect God to a world that needs to know him. Look at Genesis 1.27 again:

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; [that’s the most important thing about us. But then, end of the verse] male and female he created them.

So the first thing to say from that is that men and women are made equally in the image of God; we’re equal in value and worth. But the next thing to say is that men and women are different; we’re made male and female. So according to Jesus and the Bible, sex is binary. And our sex isn’t something (to use today’s jargon) ‘assigned at birth’. It’s a creation reality, assigned to us by God from conception through the chromosomes that make every cell in your body either male or female. Now I think it’s true to say that our biological sex shapes our experience and outlook in either a male or female way. But that doesn’t tie you down to being a particular type of man or woman, because there’s no exact ‘blueprint’ of masculinity and femininity in the Bible. That isn’t to say that God in his Word says nothing to men and women respectively about how to live as men and women. For example, in marriage he calls men and women to different roles that call for different qualities, but even then there’s no blueprint.

So we need to be careful about teaching and books which try to define Biblical masculinity and femininity, because sometimes they give a blueprint that the Bible doesn’t. And sometimes they reflect their culture as much as the Bible. For example, there’s an American book called Wild at Heart, which unsurprisingly paints the Biblical man as someone up the ‘hunting shooting fishing’ end of the spectrum. Which certaintly isn’t me. And sometimes in a Christian context, when a man’s not sure he wants to be a man, or a woman’s not sure she wants to be a woman, one reason may be the false stereotypes of masculinity and femininity they’re being presented with. So Jesus says: we need to recognise this created reality about ourselves, and accept it and live within it.

Now, this side of the fall, probably none of us finds that straightforward. To accept that I’m a man or I’m a woman. To accept the biology and body that goes with that. To accept the particular body I have. But we also need to be aware of those who find that almost impossible. They’re the people who would be diagnosed with ‘gender dysphoria’ – and one definition of that is ‘experiencing the serious and long-term distress of feeling you are in the wrong body.’ And to give an idea of how many people that might affect, an American study found it was 1 in 10,000 adult men and 1 in 30,000 adult women. And the question is: how do we respond? Well, currently, our society says: ‘We must affirm the person’s perception of reality, and help them bring their lived reality, and the physical reality of their body, into line with their perception.’ But the question is: what would Jesus say? And I’m no expert in how someone could be helped to work this through, but wouldn’t Jesus says: ‘We need to recognise created reality and then start trying to understand why we feel so at odds with it.’

And medical evidence points that way. So, Doctor Paul McHugh was Professor of Psychiatry at John Hopkins University Hospital in America, where they pioneered so-called ‘sex reassignment surgery’, but they stopped it after nearly 15 years because they found: there was either no psychological benefit from the surgery, or patients ended up worse psychologically. And Paul McHugh’s conclusions were; 1. That the problem is psychological and needs to be addressed psychologically. 2. That the surgery went against medical ethics (which says you shouldn’t mutilate a healthy part of a body). There’s only time for that brief mention of the hugely distressing experience of gender dysphoria.

And there’s even less time to mention the much broader movement of men and women declaring themselves to be ‘trans’. And that can be for various reasons. For some it’s because they want to leave behind the whole idea of ‘male and female’ – which they think can only be oppressive to women. For some women, it’s because of the epidemic of pornography: they know what men are looking at, and say to themselves ‘If being a woman means being treated like that, then I don’t want to be a woman.’ And for others, it’s because they see the trans group as the most affirming, accepting place to be as they try to work out their identity. But Jesus says: we need to recognise created reality – that we’re made in the image of God, made male and female – and we need to accept it and live within it, trusting that it’s best for us. Then the last point for this week is that Jesus says:

3. We need to realise we’re fallen people with fallen desires and feelings

Let’s turn back to page 824 and Matthew 19. So these Pharisees ask Jesus Is it lawful to divorce one's wife for any cause? And Jesus takes them back to creation and then answers them at the end of Matthew 19.6:

What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.

Matthew 19.7:

They said to him, “Why then did Moses command one to give a certificate of divorce and to send her away?”

So they’re going back not to creation, but to God’s Old Testament law given through Moses, where there’s one law about divorce. But it doesn’t give any permission to divorce. It simply assumes that sadly, in a fallen world, men will divorce their wives, and it says what must be done to protect the woman afterwards, because God cares deeply for those in that situation. So the Pharisees were making the mistake of thinking their desire to divorce was OK, and even affirmed by God – because he’d given a law about it. But Jesus says to them: No, your desire to divorce is part of your fallenness – and God’s law about divorce doesn’t affirm it at all. Look on to Matthew 19.8:

[Jesus] said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart [your fallenness] Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, [again, that didn’t mean permission, but acceptance of the sad reality of divorce] but from the beginning it was not so.

So Jesus is saying to them: ‘You need to realise you’re fallen people with fallen desires and feelings. So you mustn’t look unquestioningly to your desires and feelings to tell you how to live. You need to go back to creation and look to God to tell you.’ And Jesus would say the same to us. Because the Bible says that, since the fall, since Adam and Eve turned away from God in Genesis 3, all human beings have been born fallen. And that affects every part of us, including our sexuality. So one thing that needs saying is that everyone here has a fallen sexuality. For some of us that means, at least right now, experiencing same sex attraction. But that’s no worse than the fallenness of those whose attraction is heterosexual. For example, sadly, as a non-Christian teenager at school, I encountered pornography. And those who’ve done that know that it leaves you with a weakness and inclination towards it that needs constant vigilance and accountability to resist. That’s just one example of heterosexual falleness. There are many more. And I want to say: if you experience same sex attraction, your fallenness is no worse than mine. We’re in the same boat – we’re just on different sides of the seat.

And I also want to say: if we’re trusting in Jesus, God looks down at us in the boat, through the lens of what Jesus did on the cross to take away our sin, and he doesn’t see our fallenness at all. He looks at us and loves us as people who are completely acceptable to him thanks to Jesus. When did that thought last amaze you? But the other thing that needs saying is this; we’re constantly being told that we should look inside, to our own desires and feelings, to tell us how to live. And we might find same sex attraction there, or the feeling that I’d rather be a different sex. And we’re told that those desires and feelings are the real us, and that we need to live them out to be our authentic selves. But Jesus says that isn’t true. Because he says we need to recognise we’re fallen people with fallen desires and feelings. Which means we shouldn’t unquestioningly look inside and think that everything in there is the real me. Because it’s actually a mixture of what’s good from creation and what’s messed up by the fall. And so Jesus calls us instead to look outside, to him, to find who we we’re really meant to be, and to find the strength to be it.