19 Now when Jesus had finished these sayings, he went away from Galilee and entered the region of Judea beyond the Jordan. 2 And large crowds followed him, and he healed them there.
3 And Pharisees came up to him and tested him by asking, “Is it lawful to divorce one's wife for any cause?” 4 He answered, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, 5 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’?6 So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.” 7 They said to him, “Why then did Moses command one to give a certificate of divorce and to send her away?”8 He said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so. 9 And I say to you: whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery.” (Matthew 19)
The first two verses form a kind of intro. Jesus made himself more open to the criticism of the Pharisees by getting closer to Jerusalem. But they have no way to criticize what He is doing - healing the sick. So they go after what He is saying. They really are not interested in His answers, but choose a controversial subject which is intended to divide the crowd. He reply is simple: quote God. They respond with the typical question of a toddler, teen, or troubled adult: Why? This opens them up to deserved criticism. They have wrongly interpreted God's Word and will. God doesn't want anyone to get divorced because by His creative design it is to reflect the intimacy of the relationship between God, His Son, and the church. When we mess up marriage, we mess up that picture. There is nothing wrong with asking God "Why" unless all we are looking for is a loophole. But when we are, we need to go back and read the directions, see where we messed up, confess it, and move forward by His grace - not continue on in making excuses.
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