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What God Joins: Protecting the Vulnerable in a Hard-Hearted World (Matthew 19:1–12)
Mike McIntosh
June 14, 2025
📰 The KNGDOM Newsletter – June 14, 2025
Lesson Title: What God Joins: Protecting the Vulnerable in a Hard-Hearted World
Passage: Matthew 19:1–12
📺 Want to watch the full teaching? Click here to view the June 14th, 2025 Lesson.
Introduction to Today’s Lesson
Hey Everyone,
Thank you for taking a moment to open the Word with us again this week.
Today we step into Matthew 19:1–12 — a passage that has sparked debate in every generation since Jesus first spoke these words.
And because it touches on marriage and divorce — topics that are deeply personal, deeply complex, and often deeply painful — I want to begin with a clear frame for how we will approach it:
Our goal today is to simply illuminate what Jesus said, and how His original audience would have heard it.
We will not attempt to build a full theology of marriage or divorce.
We will not dive into modern debates about different expressions of marriage.
We will not prescribe how this passage should be applied to every scenario today — because that is not what Jesus was doing here.
What we will do is this:
We will slow down and listen to Jesus’ heart.
We will see how this teaching, like all of His teaching, is rooted in protecting the vulnerable.
We will notice how Jesus reframes a hard-hearted question and calls His hearers — and us — back to the Father’s original intention.
Because, as you’ll see, this isn’t really a story about marriage — it’s a story about what kind of people we are becoming:
Are we the kind of people who treat relationships lightly and others as disposable?
Or are we becoming people who carry life-long commitments with love, humility, and a heart that protects?
Let’s dive in.
Recap of Last Week’s Lesson (Matthew 18:10–34)
Last week, we closed out Matthew 18 — a chapter that gives us one of the clearest pictures of life in the Kingdom family.
We explored:
How the Father watches over the little ones — and how we are called to reflect His pursuing heart.
That real love confronts sin — not to shame, but to restore.
That forgiveness isn’t optional — it is the family culture of the Kingdom.
Jesus told the sobering Parable of the Unforgiving Servant — reminding us that:
“If you’ve been forgiven an unpayable debt, you must become a forgiving person.”
If you missed it or want to revisit it, you can read last week’s full Kingdom Newsletter here:
📖 Scripture Reading – Matthew 19:1–12 (ESV)
Now when Jesus had finished these sayings, he went away from Galilee and entered the region of Judea beyond the Jordan. And large crowds followed him, and he healed them there.
And Pharisees came up to him and tested him by asking, “Is it lawful to divorce one’s wife for any cause?”
He answered, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, 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’? So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.”
They said to him, “Why then did Moses command one to give a certificate of divorce and to send her away?”
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. And I say to you: whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery.”
The disciples said to him, “If such is the case of a man with his wife, it is better not to marry.”
But he said to them, “Not everyone can receive this saying, but only those to whom it is given. For there are eunuchs who have been so from birth, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by men, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Let the one who is able to receive this receive it.”
🧭 Context & Background
At this point in Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus is moving south toward Judea — and tension is rising.
The Pharisees approach Him with a loaded question: “Is it lawful to divorce one’s wife for any cause?”
This wasn’t a sincere theological inquiry — it was a trap.
In first-century Jewish culture, marriage was deeply tied to a family’s honor, lineage, and stability.
But for women, it was also tied to survival.
Here’s the stark reality:
A married woman was under her husband’s legal and financial covering.
A single or divorced woman had almost no rights or social standing:
She could not easily provide for herself.
She could not inherit property.
She risked poverty, exploitation, and marginalization.
Her value in the marriage marketplace was diminished, making remarriage difficult.
In this world, a man could divorce his wife relatively easily:
Under the more lenient Hillel school of thought, even trivial reasons (burning a meal, displeasing the husband) could justify divorce.
Under the stricter Shammai school, only sexual immorality permitted it.
But here’s the heart issue:
Many men wanted the freedom to dispose of their wives without consequence — to preserve their own comfort, convenience, and control.
And in doing so, they would sentence those women to hardship and shame.
This is the backdrop for Jesus’ strong words:
He is not trying to burden people with legalism.
He is protecting the vulnerable — confronting a culture that treated women as expendable.
When He says, “What God has joined together, let no man separate,”
He’s challenging the very heart of the question — and the hard hearts behind it.
✨ Key Lessons & Takeaways
1. The Kingdom Protects the Vulnerable — Even When the Culture Doesn’t
At first glance, the Pharisees’ question to Jesus sounds theological:
“Is it lawful to divorce one’s wife for any cause?”
But beneath the question is something much darker — they are looking for permission to dispose of women without consequence.
In Jesus’ day, men had immense social and legal power.
Women had very little protection:
A married woman was covered by her husband’s provision and family honor.
A divorced woman was vulnerable to poverty, exploitation, and social shame — often with no way to rebuild her life.
And many men — even religious leaders — wanted an easy way out when marriage no longer suited them.
But Jesus won’t play along.
He reframes the entire conversation: “What God has joined together, let no man separate.”
Why? Because His heart — as always — is to protect the vulnerable.
To confront those who use power selfishly.
To call His followers to honor relationships, not discard them.
To remind us that Kingdom life is about preserving life, dignity, and trust — not protecting ego or convenience.
Takeaway:
Whenever we approach decisions about relationships — in marriage or in any commitment — we must ask:
Am I protecting the vulnerable?
Am I seeking to preserve life and dignity?
Or am I looking for an easy way out at someone else’s expense?
2. Not All Commitments Reflect God’s Heart — But We’re Still Called to Honor His Design
When Jesus quotes Genesis, He’s reminding His hearers that the ideal for marriage is something initiated and blessed by God — not simply a human contract or convenience.
But here’s the hard truth:
Not every marriage begins with both people fully seeking the Lord.
Not every union reflects God’s heart from the start.
Sometimes, fear, loneliness, pressure, or broken desires drive us toward commitments God didn’t intend for us to be in.
And Jesus is not naive about this — He knows the hardness of human hearts leads to choices that fall short of God’s intention.
But what He is calling us to here is not blind idealism — it’s a reorientation of our posture:
To take relationships seriously.
To stop treating people as disposable.
To recognize when we have committed ourselves in ways that demand humility and responsibility, not self-protection or escape.
Takeaway:
Not every relationship begins as something God initiated, but once we are in covenant, the Kingdom call is to treat it with the weight and dignity of something sacred.
And as we move forward in life, we must let God’s heart — not our impulses — guide the commitments we make.
3. Jesus Is Teaching Heart Posture, Not Making an Exhaustive Rule
It’s easy to read this passage legalistically — as if Jesus is creating an ironclad rulebook for every possible scenario around marriage and divorce.
But that is not what He’s doing here.
Remember: Jesus is addressing a trap question from the Pharisees — not a sincere inquiry about how to honor God in broken relationships.
And Jesus does not simply quote Moses — He exposes their hearts:
“Because of your hardness of heart, Moses allowed you to divorce your wives — but from the beginning it was not so.”
He’s saying:
Your ancestors demanded a certificate because they had already left their wives in their hearts.
And now you are asking for loopholes — not to protect life, but to justify selfishness.
In the Kingdom, Jesus is teaching us to take our commitments seriously — not because they’re easy, but because they reflect the faithfulness of God.
And yes — there are unfortunate realities where situations (abuse, abandonment, unrepentant sin, or other deeply complex scenarios) that are in direct conflict with God’s heart of protecting and promoting life, which can lead us to a hard decision where divorce needs to be considered.
Jesus is not blind to the various scenarios human condition pulls us into — However, this passage is calling us to examine the posture of our hearts:
Are we seeking God’s heart and protecting life?
Or are we using religious language to rationalize hardness of heart?
Takeaway:
The Kingdom way is not about rigid rules — it’s about living with a heart posture that values faithfulness, protection, and the flourishing of others above convenience or control. The one rule we have is to love God and love our neighbor. The question that should be driving all our decisions is “What does love look like in this scenario?”
Challenge for the Week
Here are three questions to carry into the week — and to pray through honestly before the Father:
Am I protecting the vulnerable — or preserving my own convenience?
In my relationships, leadership, and decisions, do I lean toward honoring life and dignity, or do I subtly seek ways to prioritize my own comfort at the expense of others?
Where do I need to examine the posture of my heart?
Are there commitments I’ve treated casually — or relationships I’ve been tempted to discard — not out of obedience to God, but out of hardness of heart?
Where is Jesus calling me to re-engage with love and faithfulness?
Am I seeking God’s heart before making big decisions — or trusting my own wisdom?
When it comes to relationships, marriage, and other lifelong commitments, am I slowing down long enough to ask:
“Has God truly joined this? Is this something He is authoring — or something I am rushing toward out of my own will?”
Final Word
This is one of those passages where it would be easy to either dodge the tension or weaponize the words.
But Jesus does neither.
Instead, He calls us back to something deeper — to the very heart of the Father:
A heart that protects the vulnerable.
A heart that honors commitments.
A heart that confronts selfishness and hardness wherever it hides.
And if we’re honest, that’s a heart posture all of us need to grow in.
Because here’s the sobering truth:
In Jesus’ day, He used what sounded like a strict view of marriage to protect the vulnerable — especially women who were being discarded and left exposed.
But in our day, that same strictness is too often used to control and silence them.
In many conservative religious spaces, we’ve taken Jesus’ words — meant to confront power — and turned them into a tool to fortify it.
We’ve held rigid, dogmatic views on divorce not to guard life, but to protect institutions and reputations, often at the expense of those who are hurting most.
And in doing so, we’ve missed the point entirely.
We’ve misread God’s intention — and like the Pharisees, we’ve used the law to benefit those in power, making the powerless even more subject to it.
But Jesus isn’t interested in preserving a legal system.
He’s interested in restoring a people.
He invites us to take our commitments seriously — not to trap us, but to free us from the kind of casual love that wounds and discards.
So the question isn’t, “What’s the rule?”
The question is, “What reflects the heart of the Father?”
Because in the Kingdom, we don’t ask “What can I get away with?”
We ask, “What protects life? What preserves trust? What honors the image of God in others?”
Let’s become those people — not just in belief, but in posture.
Grace and courage to you this week,
— Michael