Main Idea: God’s design for marriage and sexuality should be embraced as both good and essential and deviation from it viewed as harmful and sinful.

1 And he left there and went to the region of Judea and beyond the Jordan, and crowds gathered to him again. And again, as was his custom, he taught them.

Hardened Hearts Will Seek To Deviate From God’s Design for Marriage and Sexuality

• 2-5 And Pharisees came up and in order to test him asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?” He answered them, “What did Moses command you?” They said, “Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of divorce and to send her away.” And Jesus said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart he wrote you this commandment.
  • Deuteronomy 24:1–4
  • Romans 1:21, 24–27
  • Romans 2:5

God’s Design for Human Sexuality is Good and Essential for Christian Discipleship

• 6 But from the beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female.’
  • Genesis 1:26, 27
  • Galatians 3:28

God’s Design for Marriage is Good and Essential for Christian Discipleship

• 7–9 Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.”
  • Genesis 2:23–25
  • Ephesians 5:22–30

Divorce is a Deviation from God’s Design for Marriage and Sexuality

• 10–12 And in the house the disciples asked him again about this matter. And he said to them, “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her, and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.”
  • Matthew 5:31, 32
  • 1 Corinthians 7:12–16

So What?

• We should honor God’s design for marriage and sexuality as a reflection of the gospel that saves and unites us.
  • Isaiah 5:20
  • Hebrews 13:4
  • Ephesians 5:31–33