Divorce and remarriage is one of the most complicated and controversial subjects in the Bible. Given the serious nature of this subject, it is surprising that Jesus Christ and the Apostle Paul are the only two who addressed divorce and remarriage in the New Testament and what they said is limited to the Synoptic Gospels (cf. Mt. 5:31-32; 19:3-9; Mk. 10:2-12; Lk. 16:18) and the Pauline Epistles (cf. Rom. 7:1-4; 1 Cor. 7:10-16, 39). Any conclusions about divorce and remarriage must be derived by harmonizing these six passages along with Genesis 2:24, Jeremiah 3:8 and Malachi 2:16. The basic point Jesus made the first time He referenced divorce and remarriage was getting divorced and remarried except in the case of adultery is tantamount to adultery.

In Romans 8:23–25, the apostle Paul describes the reality that believers, like all creation, groan under the weight of living in a fallen world. Yet this groaning is not without purpose or hope. As those who have received the first fruits of the Spirit, Christians live in the tension between what has already been accomplished in Christ and what is yet to come. While we wait for the full realization of our adoption and redemption, we are sustained by a hope that is not based on what we can see, but on the promises of God. This passage teaches us how to endure present suffering with patient hope, fixing our eyes on what is unseen and eternal.

In the classic story of “Doubting Thomas,” we learn that knowing and following the risen Lord Jesus Christ is more about faith than it is about proof. The primary contention of most atheists, agnostics, and skeptics of the Christian faith is the lack of visible or tangible evidence. They like to argue that if they could just see it, touch it, or experience it, then they would believe it. But until they do, they refuse to believe. They live their lives according to the popular misconception that “seeing is believing.” While it is natural to assume you must understand something before you can believe it, the Bible says you must believe something in order to understand it. In other words, “believing is seeing.”

Throughout history, people have believed that divine wrath must be appeased by offering some kind of sacrifice. While pagan religions portray gods who must be bribed or pacified, the Bible reveals that the one true God is holy and just, and His righteous wrath against sin must be satisfied. The consistent message of Scripture is that our sin has incurred God’s wrath, and there is nothing we can do to appease it on our own. But in His great love, God took the initiative to provide the very sacrifice He required by sending His Son, Jesus Christ, to die in our place. On the cross, Jesus became our propitiation, absorbing and satisfying the full fury of God’s wrath so that we could be forgiven and reconciled to Him. This passage can be understood through four key passages that explain why Jesus had to die.

On Palm Sunday, Christians around the world commemorate Jesus’ triumphal entry when He publicly presented Himself as the Messiah to the nation of Israel by riding into their capital city on a donkey on the first day of the annual Passover celebration. All four gospel writers include this account in their record of the life and ministry of Jesus Christ. But Luke included something in his gospel that Matthew, Mark, and John did not which provides us a unique perspective of this pivotal event. Luke is the only gospel writer who recounted that in the midst of the cheering crowd, Jesus was weeping. What made Him so sad when everyone else was so happy? The same thing that makes Jesus sad today. When people miss the opportunity to receive Him as their personal Lord and Savior and must then suffer the awful consequences for rejecting Him.

The tragic story of David and Bathsheba powerfully illustrates what Jesus said in the Sermon On The Mount that committing adultery is about the connection between our eyes, our hearts, and our hands. Here’s how the connection works: What we feed our eyes fuels our hearts and will eventually flesh itself out in our lives. Or said another way, lustful looks lead to lustful thoughts and lustful thoughts lead to lustful acts. The Old Testament places the heart and eyes together side by side like a toxic twosome or a destructive duo that are in cahoots with each other to corrupt and destroy our lives. When we let our eyes wander our hearts are sure to follow. Wandering eyes lead to wandering hearts. Every true follower of Christ knows the strategic role that guarding the eyes plays in their personal holiness and growth in godliness. In vv. 27-30, Jesus put in place TWO GUARDRAILS to keep us from careening off course and crashing and burning our lives in an adulterous affair and perhaps even losing our souls in hell.

The very first crime committed in the history of mankind was a murder. The classic Old Testament story of Cain and Abel powerfully illustrates what Jesus said in the Sermon On The Mount about how murder is fueled by anger and jealousy. It is not surprising that Jesus began with what the Law says about murder to explain what the kind of righteousness that surpasses the scribes and Pharisees looks like. The self-righteous scribes and Pharisees taught and modeled a superficial, hypocritical, legalistic system of righteousness that merely focused on external actions. Based on their knowledge of the Old Testament, they should have known that God cares more about what is going on in a person’s mind and heart. For the sake of His followers, Jesus wanted to correct what they had been told by these Jewish religious leaders and restore the true intent and full force of God’s commands by not only confronting the outer sinful actions but also the inner sinful thoughts, attitudes, motives, and desires that lead to our actions. He focused on the attitude behind the act or the sin beneath the sin or the root that produces the fruit. In vv. 21-26, there are TWO SAFETY MEASURES we must take to avoid murdering someone with our mitts or our mouths or in our minds.

Throughout His ministry, Jesus often referenced the Old Testament Scriptures. The foundation for these many references or the fountain from which all these references flowed is Matthew 5:17-20. Here is the very first utterance of Jesus regarding what He believed about the Old Testament which was the Bible He read, meditated on, and quoted from. These four verses serve as the introduction to Jesus’ powerful, practical interpretation and application of the Law of God as outlined in the Old Testament. His goal was to uncover the truth of God’s Word which was encrusted with the barnacles of man-made traditions and false interpretations of the Jewish religious leaders. He wanted the citizens of His kingdom to know what to believe and how to live and to realize their spiritual leaders were not worthy guides to follow to get into the kingdom of heaven due to the fact that they had a distorted and deficient view of the Bible. In vv. 17-20, Jesus laid out FOUR BASIC TRUTHS about the Bible which reveal His view of the Scriptures and should also be our view of the Scriptures.

We come now to the main body of the Sermon On The Mount in which Jesus articulated the standard of righteousness we all must attain in order to make it to heaven. The only standard of righteousness the people in Jesus’ day knew was the artificial, external righteousness of the proud, legalistic religious leaders who taught you had to earn your way to heaven by your own good works which included how much you gave, how long you prayed, and how often you fasted. Because the religious leaders were completely wrong in how they superficially interpreted and applied the Law, Jesus was compelled to provide His own interpretation and application of the Law and explain its deeper implications. Vv. 17-20 serve as an introduction to Jesus’ powerful, practical exposition of the Law. These four verses are the interpretive key to the rest of the Sermon On The Mount. The challenge is this text can be confusing. These four verses have all sorts of theological ramifications which lead to numerous discussions on the intricacies and nuances of the relation between the Old and New Testaments, the relation between the Law and the Gospel, and the relation of this text to the many other New Testament texts that unambiguously affirm that certain parts of God’s Law have now been done away with and no longer apply to Christians. There are few things more confusing to Christians in our day than the role that God’s Law plays in our lives.

As we wrap up our study of the greatest love song of all time, we see this exemplary couple model the kind of lifelong love it takes for every married couple to remain loyally and faithfully committed to each other until the day they die. As the years go by, the relationship between a husband and wife should grow and mature, and even when their desire and/or ability to be physically intimate eventually fades, the commitment to one another that has always been behind it remains and they are closer and stronger than ever. In the remaining verses, we learn what we can do to ensure we are growing and maturing in our relationship with our spouse. This seasoned couple says and does some of the same things they have already said and done earlier but with a few differences and additions. And we will get the clear sense they are at a much more mature stage in their relationship. That maturity is by and large the result of the many conflicts and reconciliations they have experienced over the years. We see the durability of their relationship as it has endured, by God’s grace, the wear and tear of married life (i.e. ups and downs, joys and sorrows, blessings and challenges, fighting and making up, etc.).