Marriage and Divorce - Impossible to Possible - Matthew S5E8

“I hate divorce,” God says in Malachi 2:16. That is the only time in Scripture God declares hatred for something, and the word means “sworn enemy.” But the same passage that delivers that hard truth also contains the reason for it—and the reason is not what most people expect. This sermon, preached from Matthew 19, builds a case that marriage exists primarily as a living picture of something unbreakable: Christ’s covenant love for the church. Divorce matters so much to God precisely because marriage matters so much more than we think.

God’s design: a supernatural cementing

When the Pharisees asked Jesus whether a man could divorce his wife “for any cause,” they were testing which rabbinical school he sided with—the liberal Hillel school (any reason at all) or the stricter Shammai school (only sexual immorality). But Jesus refused to play that game. Instead, he took them back to Genesis and gave them a Bible study on God’s original design.

Jesus quoted Genesis 2:24: “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” The word “hold fast” in Hebrew is the strongest possible language for permanent binding—a naval term for grabbing something during a storm and refusing to let go, no matter how hard the wind blows. God designed marriage as a physical cementing.