Mark 10:1-12 (NLT)

¹  Then Jesus left Capernaum and went down to the region of Judea and into the area east of the Jordan River. Once again crowds gathered around him, and as usual he was teaching them.

² Some Pharisees came and tried to trap him with this question: “Should a man be allowed to divorce his wife?”

³ Jesus answered them with a question: “What did Moses say in the law about divorce?”

⁴ “Well, he permitted it,” they replied. “He said a man can give his wife a written notice of divorce and send her away.”

⁵ But Jesus responded, “He wrote this commandment only as a concession to your hard hearts. ⁶ But ‘God made them male and female’ from the beginning of creation. ⁷ ‘This explains why a man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife, ⁸ and the two are united into one.’ Since they are no longer two but one, ⁹ let no one split apart what God has joined together.”

¹⁰ Later, when he was alone with his disciples in the house, they brought up the subject again. ¹¹ He told them, “Whoever divorces his wife and marries someone else commits adultery against her. ¹² And if a woman divorces her husband and marries someone else, she commits adultery.”

Dear God, I wonder why the Pharisees picked this topic to trap Jesus. There were a lot of things they could have asked him about. Why divorce? What were they hoping he would say? Were they trying to get him to say that divorce was okay so they could pounce on him? Was one of them wanting a divorce? It seems like a weird thing to ask him.

“He wrote this commandment only as a concession to your hard hearts.” When I think about it, this is a surprising line. Why would Moses (or you through Moses) have made this concession in the first place? Is there a point that my hard heart/stubbornness can change your law?

Then I have to ask myself where my own heart is hard? Are there beliefs that I have that I stubbornly hold onto for selfish/self-indulgent reasons? Just because Jesus mentions in verse six that “God made them male and female,” I wonder about the gay marriage thing and if the belief that is spreading in our generation that gay marriage is biblically okay is an example of this hard-heartedness. I have certainly evolved on this issue over the course of the last 20 years. Is that me finding truth, or is it the hard hearts winning?

Well, I probably just touched the third rail of theological topics there, so I’m going to move on and wonder what other areas in my own life might be driven by a hard heart. The scary thing is that I can’t immediately think of any. That scares me because it makes me think I am likely blind to my own stubbornness.

Father, help me to hear your voice. Help me to know your truth. Help me to accept your will and submit to it. Help me to stand up for your Kingdom.

In Jesus’ name I pray,

Amen