He Hasn't Given Up on You

Proofread Broadcast Transcript

O magnify the Lord with me, let us exalt his name together. It's Monday, October 12th, 2026. Welcome to Mark & Friends.

Today Pastor Jason Epperson of CU Church takes us into Mark chapter 10, exploring God's design for marriage, the pain of broken relationships, and his amazing grace. Here's Pastor Jason. And so Jesus is just leaving the Feast of Tabernacles.

He's left Jerusalem. He's got all these people that are following him, talking to him. And as he's leaving, these religious leaders, they're called the Pharisees and the Sadducees.

Remember, basically it's like the political group of people that are in charge of the Jewish nation. They kind of bow down to Rome. But in this process, they're trying to question Jesus.

And the reason they hated Jesus so much was twofold. One is he said he was God. They didn't like that.

And the second was Jesus didn't fit their agenda. And so they're coming to Jesus in this moment. I don't want to pull any punches.

This passage is simply put, Jesus isn't addressing people in the court of Gentiles this week. Jesus is addressing a group of religious leaders and they're confronting him on a hot topic. It would be like someone confronting you or confronting me on a hot topic in today's culture because they know if, well, if Jason says this, 50% of the room are going to hate him.

If Jason says this, 50% of the room are going to love him. That's what's happening here. The Pharisees are trying to divide the followers of Jesus.

Does that make sense? And so they're trying to divide the followers of Jesus. The topic that they bring up to him is the topic of divorce. And you might think, well, why would that divide the followers of Jesus in this moment? This is why.

In Jewish history, God in Deuteronomy chapter 24 spoke through Moses. And in that process, Moses told them that if your spouse, if the man or the woman found themselves to be unclean, then it was okay to divorce them. In some ways, it's similar to today.

There is reasons why you can divorce. Does that make sense? And so in that moment, then there's two different philosophies, two different views of what the word uncleanliness means. And because of that, there's two camps of belief.

We're going to get to that in the sermon. But here's the first thing I need to hear you say. I've already said the word divorce and 80% of the room did this.

Hear me say this. The reason why in this passage they talk about divorce and the reason why pastors don't talk about it very often is because it's a hard topic because half the room has had it happen to them. The other half the room has had it happen to someone that they love or someone in their family.

All of us have been affected by divorce. All of us have different stories of how it happened and why it happened. And I need to tell you that the reason why God cares so much, the problem is in that conversation, what's lost is the fact that marriage is awesome.

Doesn't mean it's easy. And what's lost is why does God care so much about that moment? See, I need to point this out to you and then we're going to talk about something else. Here's the hope today, by the way, not the hope, this is what's going to happen today.

You are going to leave this room being encouraged about who God is and how he redeems everything that allows itself to be redeemed. And you're also going to leave this place today, I pray, recognizing this is why marriage matters. See, the reason why it matters so much, let me show you.

There's two institutions that really God created for us to be a part of. That's really it. There's two things God's like, these institutions matter.

You might say, well, he developed a government. Listen, he didn't want a king. He gave him a king because they begged for it.

There's two things that he developed and those are supposed to make the world go round. Is he with me? And so in the process of making the world go round, here's the two things. The first is the church.

This room of people, God intended to be the arms, the feet, and this is it. The church is supposed to be the image of God. And what has Satan done over time? Ooh boy, he's attacked it because he doesn't want the world to know who he is.

Now he used to try to attack it from the outside in. Are you with me? He used to try to oppress it. When Jesus instituted the church in 33 AD and the Holy Spirit comes down, what Satan tried to do is, let's crush the church by oppressing it, by killing people.

And what happened? The gospel spread like wildfire. The blood of martyrs was like fertilizer on the soil of the kingdom of God. And you couldn't stop it.

But then Satan figured it out. I can't destroy the church from the outside in. I've got to destroy the church from the inside out.

And we've witnessed it. The other image of God in this world is actually marriage. I'm going to show you on the screen.

This is what I mean. The first one says this. It says, this is the oneness of God.

There is three aspects of the triune God. You have God, the Father, right? You have Jesus. If Jesus looks in the mirror, we say this a lot in here, if you're new, you're going to learn something today.

And if you've been here, you should open up your mouths and speak here in a second, okay? When Jesus looks in the mirror, he sees the Father. When the Father looks in the mirror, he sees Jesus. They are the same.

And the Holy Spirit is like the essence, the Spirit of God that dwells inside of us. This is the picture of God. So what happens in here is this is oneness.

In the Bible, when it says the three of these are one, it's the oneness of God. Now I'm going to turn the next slide and I'm going to show you about the church. This is the church.

Jesus is the head of the church, ain't no dude, ain't no lady, the head of the church. Look at me right now. Jesus is the head of the church.

No senior pastor, no senior pastor, leadership team, no group of like that. We have screwed it up. Jesus is the head of the church.

There's only one worth following. His name is Jesus. But guess what? There is structure inside the church, inside the structure of the church.

There is leadership. There is elders. There's also believers that encompasses everyone in this room.

And here's the crazy thing. If we will sacrifice for each other, if we come to church thinking, how can I love the person next to me really well? How can I serve the person next to me? If the leaders are like, how can we image Jesus in everything we do? If all of us come in here every single week thinking, how can I love people like Jesus does and how can I allow myself to be loved? Family. Because the closer we get to Jesus, the closer we get to each other.

And Satan, with everything in him, wants to destroy what the church should be because it images who God is. The beauty of the church is we are not known for our successes. We are not known for our failures.

We're known for the blood of Jesus. Next slide. This is the church.

That's God. This is marriage. See, Jesus is the head of your marriage.

And you have a wife and you have a husband and the truth is in your life and in my life, the closer we walk with Jesus, the more we show who he is. Well, what does Satan want to do? He wants to destroy marriage. Why? Because he doesn't want your kids.

He doesn't want your family. He doesn't want communities. He doesn't want them to see that's what God looks like.

That's why it's such a big deal. It's a relationship, but that relationship, its purpose is supposed to be a what? Image of God. Okay, let's take those things off the screen.

Now I need to talk real straight. There is consequences in this world and we have broken relationships of any kind. Any kind of broken relationship, there's consequences, right? If I have a broken relationship with my boss, there's consequences.

If I have a broken relationship with you, there's consequences. A broken relationship with a coach, a broken relationship with a friend, there's consequences. There is consequences on this earth to a broken marriage.

There is. All of us have experienced those consequences, whether directly or indirectly. We have consequences in this world.

And one of those consequences is lots of us in this room kind of think, man, does God really love me because I made this mistake? Or how do I earn his love? And the reason we think that way is because we very rarely ever seen someone love someone the way Jesus wants us to love them and realize Jesus ain't ever going to quit. Let me tell you a consequence, let me tell you what is not a consequence of making a mistake in this world. It's not a consequence of a divorce.

It's not a consequence of adultery. It's not a consequence of greed. It's not a consequence of lying.

Let me tell you what's not a consequence of screwing this up, which almost all of us have done. Are you with me? All of us have screwed this thing up. Here's not a consequence that God doesn't love you passionately, still has a purpose for you, plan for you, and still wants to show you and use you to show the world who he is.

Just because you've made a mistake, the consequence of that mistake has nothing to do with God's love for you, his passion for you. Listen to me. He ain't quitting on you.

He ain't quitting on you. That's why he cares so much about it. Because he wants the world to know, guess what the church should never do? Quit on you.

And we have. I just want you to know that all of us in this room have fallen short, but because of Jesus, we are still loved. We are still used.

We are still purposed. In this passage, we're going to talk about at the very end. There is disciples that I believe for sure were divorced.

I believe, like I, I'm not going to give you the whole sermon yet. I just did. Preached it.

Okay. We out. No, let's read it now.

Okay. I just, here's the reason I have to talk about it all at the beginning. I didn't want to lose you because just be honest.

In this type of message, if you hear something and you don't hear the redemptive plan of it, you're kind of like, you with me? He loves you. He's with you. Let's figure out how we can continue to image God no matter what happened in our past or even what's happening in our present.

It says, and he left there and went to the region of Judea and beyond the Jordan crowds gathered to him again and again was his custom. He taught them and the Pharisees came up and in order to test him. So they didn't ask him because they wanted to know they were testing him.

Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife? It's a hot button. Here's why it's a hot button. There was two different philosophies in this moment.

Remember in Deuteronomy 24 it says these words that you can divorce your wife, you can divorce your husband because of uncleanliness is the word that's used. And so there's two different thoughts. Hillel, the rabbi Hillel, he believed uncleanliness meant like sexual immorality.

This is the concept of like, I have chosen to break this covenant by being with someone else in that moment as a husband and a wife, you can walk away because the covenant's been broken. That's what rabbi Hillel believed. This other rabbi, this other rabbi, his last name was a rabbi Shumnai.

That's not how you say it by the way. And so this other dude, his belief was this uncleanliness means anything you kind of want it to be. Uncleanliness is, well, if really this had to do with men and women, because women didn't really have the power to do at this point, even though God wanted them to.

If she doesn't look like she used to, if she talks too much, if she gets in fights with your family, if she burns the unleavened bread, like I'm not, and it's, it's, it's like kind of funny for us. And it is funny. Unleavened bread was purposely a joke.

You're good for laughing. I appreciate you. But I also want you to know that like in this time in history, divorce was just as prevalent when Jesus walked the earth as it is today.

Oh, this culture is such a, listen, it's been a mess. It'll be a mess. Why? Because marriage is two very broken people coming together in an incredibly broken culture, raising incredibly broken people.

And to think that things aren't going to occasionally break, you're crazy. And God's going to love us through the brokenness. But I want you to see that the reason they're asking Jesus, the question is, which side is he going to choose? And so instead of Jesus choosing a side, this is when he says in return, and Jesus said to them, it says this, he answered them, what did Moses command you? He goes back to Deuteronomy 24.

What did Moses command you? And they said, well, Moses allowed the man to write a certificate of divorce and send her away. That sound familiar? Like they're basically saying, well, if the man doesn't want the woman, do you guys realize that the lack of rights that women had in this moment and what Jesus is about to teach them in Matthew, what he teaches them in Matthew, which is the same moment in a mark is he is literally saying, these women have the same amount of rights as men. Like it is transformational in this moment, what Jesus is about to say.

And so Jesus says, then in return, he says, and Jesus said to them, he did this, Moses wrote this, like God gave Moses this out because of their hardness of heart. He wrote this to you as a commandment. What's that mean? Why would Moses say, well, because of the hardness of heart is why he allows this to happen.

This is why. Hardness of heart is this. With me and God, we've talked about this before, remember Pharaoh, his heart was hardened.

In my life, if the Lord convicts me of something and I don't listen to it, the first time I feel really convicted, the second time I feel a little less convicted, by the hundredth time I don't feel anything, right? I feel numb. In a relationship, the first time your husband or your wife or a friend or a boyfriend or a girlfriend do something and it hurts you, it hurts. You might even say this hurts.

You start talking about it, but the more they ignore the hurt and the more you feel ignored by the hurt, it eventually makes you what? So this numbness here is not only a numbness to God and his ways, because here's the deal. Divorce is messy. That's what we're talking about here.

And the reality is, but the clearer I hear God, the more bold I can be in the decisions I make, whether I continue within this relationship God desired me to continue in, or do I need to break this off because it's destroying me and destroying my family? And God's about to give you that reason here in a second. But hardness of heart, only God can heal the hardness of heart. As you sit next to this person, the only way you can love them, serve them, grow with them again, is if God breaks something up.

And that does not happen very often. In a moment, it takes time. But I don't want you guys to miss that what Jesus is saying is, well, the reason why we don't love in the church very well is because of hardness of heart.

The reason why I don't love my wife very well is because of hardness of heart. If I would listen to the Holy Spirit, I would be the greatest husband in the world. And hear me say that, I am not.

And the reason I don't listen to the Holy Spirit all the time is because at times my heart is hard. We're going to get to marriage here in a second. I'm super excited about it, but it goes on and says this.

But from the beginning of creation, so then Jesus says, you ask me questions about the dysfunction and the brokenness, and it's there. All of us have experienced it. But let me tell you what my job is as Jesus.

And I think that's kind of my job too in the church. But this is what Jesus says. He goes, so you want to know what I think? From the beginning of creation, God made them male and female.

Therefore, a man should leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. What Jesus says is, I see the dysfunction. I see the philosophies.

I see the brokenness. I get it. And I've given you the Holy Spirit.

I've given you the word to kind of figure those things out. But it's not my job to talk about like how to navigate that. What I'm telling you is there is an ideal in this world, and the ideal is that I want your marriage to show the world who Jesus is, who I am.

See, if you're getting married to be fulfilled, it ain't a Disney show, y'all. If you're getting married to love someone, to become less selfish, to be fulfilled who Jesus is, bam, you're cooking with gas. We're going back to this.

Jesus, wife, husband. I got to point this out. In my own marriage, most of my marriage, I've been married now for 24 years.

I'm coming up on 25. And so in this process, this is what marriage is. Lots of times in life, it's like they're with us.

We do things together. We get along. But the truth is, marriage is hard.

And if you're in this room and you don't think marriage is hard, then it's really hard on the person you're married to, because they're just doing whatever you want and think, and the reality is their life sucks. Marriage is so easy. Yeah.

Yeah. It is for you. Yeah.

It's really easy. How do I know about that? Guilty. First 20 years, marriage is the easiest thing in the world.

I could write a book on marriage. And my wife's like, this sucks. I was like, oh, okay.

I've been pretty selfish. We laugh about it because we know it's what? You know what's the funniest things in the world? Things that are what? Anyway, husband, wife, here's the deal. If I can wake up every single day, I've mentioned this before, but this is the lesson on how do we image God? How can I literally live the life I've been called to live as a husband and a wife? And if you are single, Paul tells you, if you don't have to be married, be single and just figure this out with Jesus, because adding someone else to it is hard.

But in this passage, it's like in my life, what I've recognized is when I wake up in the morning and I'm willing to die to my selfishness, and I don't look to my wife of what can you give me today and what can I give you today? That's not marriage. That's not marriage. What marriage is is me saying, Jesus has called me to love my wife like Christ has loved the church.

And what that means is how can I serve you? How can I love you? How can I sacrifice for you? How can I show you that in my eyes, you are the most, I delight in your presence and everything about you. I see beauty and even the hard things. I'm going to forgive those things.

We're going to talk about those things, but how can I remove me and how can my wife remove her? And if we do that, if you look at this triangle, the closer I get to Jesus, the closer we get to each other. Oneness is not one sexual experience. Oneness is a lifestyle of selflessness that allows the air you breathe, the spirits you have, the eyes you have, the ears you have, everything in your world to be transformed into oneness with another human.

And that oneness isn't found in fairy tales and myths. It's found in the Holy Spirit. It's possible, but it's not possible by trying to please them.

It's possible by pleasing him. It's the same in the church. Like y'all, we're like, we're starting to see it happen here.

We come into this place and it's not about us. We come into this place and we put money in different bins because it's about other people. And for the first time in your life, something's different about it.

Why? It's because it's closer to the image of God than you've ever been a part of. But the work's not over in the first moment. We got to keep pressing in.

I know that's not how most marriages look, or looked, or the last one you had happened. And hear me say this, he ain't quitting on you. The same purpose you had before is the same purpose you can have again.

God is in the business of redemption. That's why he wants us to fight for it, because he's never going to stop fighting for you. The passage then goes on and says this, So they are no longer two but one flesh.

This is how I've thought about this all week, and I've never heard anyone else say this, but I'm going to try. And it's this, one flesh, and the reason why Jesus does this, it's like there's one body. Like my wife Lacey and I are one body, just like this church is one body.

And so if in this marriage, one of us is doing things in Scripture, and in Scripture there's two different things. One is sexual immorality. The other is abandonment.

Paul talks about it in 1 Corinthians. And what abandonment is, is like the lack of desire to be married to this person anymore. Like there's nothing you can do to, they don't want to fix it.

In some ways, they're saying, I don't want to be one with you, I don't want to be one with Jesus. And then because of that, what happens in the life is, if there is sin in your life or sin in my life, it causes decay, right? It causes death. And so that decay is attached to my arm.

And that arm is like, it's like gangrene, eventually it can do what? It can take over the whole body and it can kill the whole body. And so what Jesus is saying here is, is there sometimes in your life, the reality is you cutting this away, even though it's not what I desired from the beginning, but cutting this away allows you to live and allows you to be redeemed. And maybe it's the only way that other person can be redeemed.

But there is a consequence to losing a member of your body. But that consequence is never that God doesn't love you like crazy. He doesn't have purpose for you in the future and he's not going to redeem it.

You with me? Do not believe the enemy's lies. And I'm not telling you here today that we can't, I want you to fight hard to keep this together. But I'm also not going to stand up here today and say that there's not moments when someone is a part of your life that is unrepentful, unwilling, and they are constantly cheating.

They are constantly breaking. They're constantly abusing. They're constantly saying that Jesus is like, listen to me, sweet girl, listen to me, bro.

Like right now, what needs to happen is you got to cut this away. But either way, it's hard. But you got to choose your heart.

But either way, he never quits on you. What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate. And in the house of the disciples, this is also found in Matthew 19, I'll teach you about it real quick.

And in the house of the disciples, asked him again about this matter, he said to them, whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her. What they're saying here is that these dudes that are like, she burned the dinner. I'm out.

Or she doesn't look as good. I'm out. I need a new iPhone.

She's out. Does that make sense? Like in that world, if you just find someone different, you find someone new. That's just adultery.

That's what Jesus is saying here. In Matthew 19, he says, if someone commits adultery against you, then you have a choice in that moment, husband. You have a choice in that moment, wife.

They've broken the covenant. The question is, do you want to renew the covenant? That's the question. And if you do, then you renew it.

And if you're going to renew it, then you've got to forgive them and move past it. But the reality is that's a broken covenant. Same with emotional abandonment, physical abandonment, like abuse.

Those are moments that you have a choice as a husband and a wife to say, hey, this isn't healthy for anyone. But it's not if they burn the food and it's not if they look different than they used to. It's not if you're just struggling to get along.

The reason we struggle to get along is because we have two selfish people in a marriage. How do I know it? I've been a selfish person in a marriage. Then it completely changes gear.

I need to tell you this real quick. Six minutes. Six minutes.

I've been talking really fast. I believe something and I don't know this to be true, but I believe it. And most other like, I'm not going to call myself a theologian, but lots of theologians agree with me.

And this is what it is. That Paul, the apostle Paul wrote most of the New Testament. You need to hear me say this.

Paul, the apostle wrote most of the New Testament. He was a Pharisee at one point in time. Do you guys know that? He was a Pharisee.

Then he killed tons of Jewish people. But as a Pharisee, you would have had to have been what? Married. So Paul was married.

And so Paul is married. He comes to know Jesus on this road. After this, at some point in time, that changes.

At some point in Paul's life, I believe there was divorce that took place in Paul's life. Because Paul never speaks of, visits, talks about his wife in the future. But he does mention in 1 Corinthians that yes, because of sexual immorality or also because of abandonment, this can happen.

And so Paul, because this person in his world, I believe, abandoned him because he was now a Christian in this moment. And Paul realized it's better for me. I can't do this anymore.

She doesn't want to do this. She doesn't want to be married to me. She's leaving me.

But the apostle Paul, the greatest missionary that ever walked the earth, I think, I think he was divorced. And God still used him and he still literally is one of the largest leaders in the history of the church. Y'all, come here and look at my eyes.

He loves you. Stop beating yourself up for, like, stop it. I want today to lift up marriage to the highest point because it's the image of God.

But I don't want you to feel like because it didn't work perfectly that you are at the lowest point. No, he still delights and loves you. He still has purpose for your life.

The purpose for your life is not diminishing marriage. It's elevating marriage and say, hey, Lord, help me not make the same mistake twice. Another part of this that's interesting is, do you know what he asked the disciples? The disciples say, so you're telling me, he says this in Matthew 19, you're telling me the only way we can get divorced, that's what the disciples say, like his 12 closest dudes.

You're telling me the only reason we can get only way we can get divorced is if she cheats on us or like if she's abusive to us. And this is what they say. Oh, we probably shouldn't get married.

That's what they say. That's the heart and the mindset of people during this time. But what did God do with those people? Do not let the enemy deceive you.

Then he gets into this next part of the passage and we're going to go through it really fast. And they were bringing children to him that he might touch them and the disciples rebuke them. So they start bringing children in the middle of this conversation.

As kids are coming to him, the disciples are like, leave those kids away. This matters. We've got to get here today.

And these kids are coming to him. The reason they didn't want the kids to come to him is they believed those kids were not important. They believed in some ways, culturally speaking, they were trash.

And Jesus says, what some people mean for trash, I mean for treasure. He says, come on, whether you are a 98 year old child or a nine year old child, and you think you are trash or you think the world thinks you are trash. When he sees a kid, he sees priceless.

Jesus gets mad when we stand in the way of his grace. Don't miss that. The passage then goes on and says this, do not hinder them for such belongs to the kingdom of God.

Like kingdom of God belongs to children. Why is it? Because kids are so humble. No, they're arrogant.

Little turds. Most of the time. That's not why.

Like, why does the kingdom of God belong to children? Like, let's just shoot straight. Why does the kingdom of God belong to children? This is what I believe he's saying. It belongs to children because when you give them something, they know they don't have to earn it.

If that didn't hit everybody in the room, you didn't hear me say it. The reason why a little kid comes to their mom and comes to their dad and says they're hungry and you give them food, they're not like, they don't feel like they have to earn food or earn shelter or earn. They just trust.

Hey family, I pray today a lot of the wounds and baggage of your past is being ripped away today. But one other one you need to hear me say is he loves you and if you trust him, he's going to give you everything you need and desire. You don't have to earn it.

He goes on and says this, truly I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it. Like we talked about this last week. Do you trust? Like that's what this is, is do you trust in God? And he took them in his arms and blessed them laying his hands on them because he believed they were priceless.

Listening friend, whatever your story, remember this, Jesus hasn't given up on you. His love is faithful, his grace is sufficient, and he still has a purpose for your life. You've been listening to Pastor Jason Epperson of CU Church.

Find today's program, transcripts, scriptures, and additional resources under the Mark & Friends tab at GreatNewsRadio.org or WLUJ.org. Thanks for listening. Thanks for being a part of our radio listening family. This is Mark Burns with the Ministry of Great News Media.

God bless you and have a great day and night.