For the past 50 years that I have been involved in ministry, I walked with and felt for the pain

and the hurt that folks have experienced as they walk through divorce.

So my desire is not to add to the pain. Do you understand that? That's not my desire. But as I mentioned,

in the last message, I long to help those who are married to know and learn how to prove,

a fair proof their marriage. Those of you are contemplating marriage, I want you to take notice.

And I believe the Lord Jesus Christ is teaching us something very important here.

But before I get to the text, I want to remind you of the circumstances, of the time during which

our Lord Jesus was ministering on earth.

Because when you understand that you put things in context and you don't jump with the text,

during that time there was a raging debate among the scholars, among the Pharisees,

among the teachers of the law about marriage and divorce.

I mean, you think that we have debates. There was a raging debate. There were two major

divisions among the Jewish teachers and theologians, two major divisions, two schools

of thought. There were the conservatives, and there were the liberals. Nothing changes,

right? Nothing new under the sun. The fundamentalist camp was championed by a school called Shamaai.

They took the verse in Deuteronomy 24-1, where the Lord talks about marriage and divorce,

they took that verse, and they said divorce can only take place for one cause and one cause only,

and that's adultery. Now, the translation of the word adultery in Deuteronomy 24-1 is unchastity, sometimes translated

indecency. One rabbi following Shamai said, let a wife be as mischievous as Jezebel.

She cannot be divorced except for adultery. The second group of rabbis,

they're the equivalent of those liberals of our day. They followed a liberal rabbi by the name of

Halel. Halel defined the word unchastity or indecency in Deuteronomy 24-1 to mean anything you wanted to mean.

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