Some Pharisees came to him, and to test him they asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any cause?” He answered, “Have you not read that the one who made them at the beginning ‘made them male and female,’ and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? So they are no longer two but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.” They said to him, “Why then did Moses command us to give a certificate of dismissal and to divorce her?” He said to them, “It was because you were so hard-hearted that Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so. And I say to you, whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another commits adultery, and he who marries a divorced woman commits adultery.”

The disciples said to him, “If such is the case of a man with his wife, it is better not to marry.” —Matthew 19:3-10

God Created us for

(and some of us find intimacy in marriage)

”Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.” – Genesis 2:24

In the Bible, the Hebrew basar is translated as “

.” It always refers to the physical part of humanity.

But the text is mostly about

intimacy.

No Jewish couple in Jesus’ day would have been able to even conceive of having

spiritual lives.

Sharing spiritual intimacy is the

of marriage.

Most of us don’t really know how to share spiritual intimacy—and that is where the

comes in to help.

God Always Gives a

Chance

Jesus recognizes that not

marriages last. The covenant can be severed because of “hard hearts.”

But God is a God of

. In marriage and in any other way we sin, God offers the chance to start over.

The “starting over” will fail unless we come to grips with how we failed the

time.

Focus on

(Deuteronomy 24:1-4)

The key phrase is in verse 1: “something

.” (erwath dabar).

Because of this ambiguity, two different rabbinical schools emerged. On one side was the more conservative Shammai school, and on the other, the more liberal Hillel school, both well known around the time of Jesus.

And the School of Hillel says: “[He may divorce her] even if she spoiled a

for him.”

We are Called to Share Joy! (Song of Solomon 2:8-11)

“My

” (Hebrew dôdî) is the girl’s favorite epithet for her boyfriend.

The term occurs elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible and it can mean simply “love” or “

.”