The sermon opens with prayer and turns to Matthew 5:31-32, then to Matthew 19:3-9, where the Pharisees test Jesus on the lawfulness of divorce. The preacher acknowledges the difficulty and pain of the topic before working through it in three parts: marriage, divorce, and remarriage, drawing heavily on John Murray, Jay Adams, Kevin DeYoung, and Richard Pratt, and submitting his own conclusions to the confessional tradition of the reformed church rather than claiming novel authority.

The sermon first establishes marriage as a creation ordinance. From Genesis 1, God commands the first couple to be fruitful and multiply; from Genesis 2, God declares it not good for man to be alone and forms the woman from the man's rib, so that the two become one flesh. Marriage is therefore honorable, dignified, and designed to be permanent, which is why Jesus can say, "What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate." Malachi 2:13-16 reinforces this: God refuses Israel's offerings because the men have been faithless to the wives of their youth, showing that unbiblical divorce is itself sin and that horizontal unfaithfulness disrupts vertical worship.

Returning to Matthew 5, the sermon traces Jesus' quotation of Deuteronomy 24:1 concerning the certificate of divorce and explains the rabbinic debate of the era: the school of Hillel read "indecency" loosely enough to justify divorce over burnt food or an unkempt appearance, while the stricter school of Shammai confined it to sexual sin; a later Akiva school reduced it further to mere lack of attractiveness. This permissiveness, the sermon argues, is why the law of divorce was abused as a loophole around adultery, as with the Samaritan woman at the well who had had five husbands. Jesus' anger at the Pharisees, the sermon contends, flows from a second, deeper reason beyond mistreatment of women: marriage symbolizes the unbreakable union between Christ and his people. Romans 8 and John 6:39 are cited to show that nothing separates believers from Christ's love, and that permanence is the very ground of assurance of salvation - so any teaching that cheapens marriage's permanence cheapens that assurance too.

The sermon then explains why Moses permitted a certificate of divorce at all despite this ideal: Jesus says it was "because of your hardness of heart" (Matthew 19:8), and the certificate itself was a protection for women - requiring judicial process, preventing false accusations of unacknowledged wrongdoing, and giving proof of single status so a woman could remarry and secure her livelihood.

The sermon then lays out the two biblical grounds for divorce. The first is sexual immorality (Matthew 5:32), understood narrowly as adultery, homosexuality, or bestiality - the very sins that carried a death penalty under the Old Testament law, so that under Roman rule divorce effectively substitutes for that penalty and frees the innocent party to remarry, as reflected in Westminster Confession of Faith 24. The second, drawn from Paul rather than Jesus, is willful desertion by an unbelieving spouse (1 Corinthians 7:15), set within Paul's larger encouragement to remain married for the sake of winning an unbelieving spouse. The sermon extends this category, following Richard Pratt, to include ongoing, unrepentant spousal abuse as a form of desertion that does not require physically leaving the home, and directly warns women in the congregation not to marry an abusive or work-refusing man in the first place.

On remarriage, three principles are offered: remarriage following an unbiblical divorce is itself sinful (Matthew 5:32); remarriage following a biblical divorce is permitted, per Matthew 19:9 and 1 Corinthians 7:39, which frames "not enslaved" as freedom to remarry "in the Lord"; and whatever past sin a person carries - adultery, desertion, divorce, or remarriage - repentance now means remaining in one's present situation rather than compounding sin by further divorce (1 Corinthians 7:17-24), while also actively seeking reconciliation and forgiveness from those hurt along the way.

The sermon closes by refusing to resolve every hard case - the culpable party's own eligibility to remarry, or polygamous marriages, are left open - insisting that judging the genuineness of repentance belongs to God alone, and that the preacher's duty is only to administer grace as the gospel prescribes. Micah 6:8 is offered as the operating principle: do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly. The sermon ends by likening God to a husband who never divorces his unfaithful people, grounding the congregation's confidence not in their own faithfulness but in the permanence of Christ's covenant love.

Bible Verses Used

• Matthew 5:31-32: the primary text; Jesus limits legitimate divorce to the ground of sexual immorality and calls all other divorce and remarriage adulterous.

• Matthew 19:3-9: the parallel text where Jesus explains Moses' concession as due to hardness of heart and reaffirms creation's design of permanent one-flesh union.

• Genesis 1:28, 2:18-24: establishes marriage as a creation ordinance, permanent and one-flesh by God's design.

• Malachi 2:13-16: shows that unbiblical divorce constitutes faithlessness that God calls sin and that hinders acceptable worship.

• Deuteronomy 24:1: the source of the certificate of divorce that the Pharisees misapplied as license for divorce.

• Romans 8:38-39: used to argue that marriage's permanence pictures the inseparability of Christ's love for his people.

• John 6:39: cited alongside Romans 8 to affirm that Christ loses none of those given to him, grounding assurance in permanence.

• 1 Corinthians 7:15, 7:24, 7:39: establishes willful desertion by an unbelieving spouse as a second biblical ground for divorce and clarifies that being "not enslaved" means freedom to remarry in the Lord.

• Micah 6:8: closing principle for how to hold these convictions - doing justice, loving kindness, and walking humbly.