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Ceres SDA Church

Anil Kanda

Delicious Grape Juice

So why don't we bow our heads for a word of prayer and let's ask Jesus to fill our heart with that Same courage as we worship him on the Sabbath father in heaven.

We thank you so much for the testimony of your people As imperfect as they may be we just thank you Lord for courageous men and women who will not compromise.

We pray that you would write the law upon our hearts, Lord, because we cannot put it there.

And as we open up the scripture, we pray and ask God for the greatest of all teachers and preachers, the Holy Spirit, to guide us to all truth, as it says in John 16.

I sense that we need to have a moment of confession.

And Lord Jesus, we pray and ask that you would forgive the sins of your people, as Daniel prayed.

That you would cleanse the hearts of Israel, Lord.

And we pray that nothing would stand in the way of receiving the blessings that you have for us.

Do you guys know What's so special about today?

And Jesus is desiring to spend this Communion time with you.

Now I know a lot of people, as soon as they hear about Communion, it's like as soon as the sermon's done I am out of here but folks I want you to understand something you are shooting yourself in the foot because through communion God wants to invigorate your faith he wants to restore you he wants to cleanse you and through communion he does so many things imperceptible that you won't even realize it till later on and folks do not miss the communion service so right after the sermon we'll dismiss for foot washing and then after foot washing we'll partake of the Lord's bread and of the juice as well.

I promise you this, that you will be blessed by God.

Now, the name of the sermon is called Delicious Grape Juice, just because I don't have the very best titles in the world.

But we're gonna be studying something very interesting.

Take your Bible and let's go to Matthew chapter 19.

And if you're there, go ahead and say amen.

Matthew chapter 19, we will be doing a Bible study, so make sure you have your Bibles out.

And by the way, if you want to have a very special blessing in church, you know where you need to sit?

I call this the blessed row right here, the first 2 rows, right here.

So if you're looking for a place to sit there's plenty of room right next to the preacher right over here okay these people get A's so all right we're going to Matthew chapter 19 are we all there please say Amen okay let's start with verse 1 now it came to pass then when Jesus had finished these sayings that he departed from Galilee and came To the region of Judea beyond the Jordan and great multitudes followed him and he healed them there The Bible is relaying to us a context.

That's apparently following Jesus The reason why they're following Jesus is because he's healing them, and he's teaching them wonderful things about the kingdom of heaven.

And the Pharisees came to him, testing him, and saying to him, is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for just any reason?

The Pharisees noticed this group of people surrounding Jesus, and they decide at that very moment they're going to test Jesus.

So they pose a question which has been a controversy in the Jewish religion at that time and by the way, there was 2 rabbinic schools of thought and these individuals were rabbis who helped influence the Jewish culture at that time and The debate was about divorce 1 of these individuals name was Halal and he said that you can divorce your wife for any reason Including even if she cooks very bad food The other individual Shamai was somebody who was also somebody who?

Influenced the thinking regards to divorce.

He said you have no right to divorce your wife except for adultery.

And so you have these 2 schools of thoughts that were just reigning over all of Judaism, and they were not only influencing the Pharisees and Sadducees, They were influencing all of culture.

And so when it came down to this question of divorce they knew it was the topic of controversy so they decide to to talk to Jesus and present to him a Question that if he was to take a side in this question he could lose the influence of the people.

So they asked this question, is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for just any reason?

Now you're thinking to yourself in the back of your head, Anel, what does this have to do with communion?

We've learned when it comes to the preaching, you wait till the very end and it all somehow comes back together, right?

So these Pharisees ask a question about divorce.

Now, when somebody comes up to you and they ask you a question about divorce, very randomly, you can often guess there is an issue behind the issue, a question behind the question.

So for example, you have your friend right here, and just say in the midst of the workday, he turns to you and says, can I ask you a question?

And he says, what does the Bible say about divorce?

Now, immediately you think to yourself, well, I can answer his question.

But also you begin to think, Maybe this individual is struggling with something when it comes to his marriage.

People just don't ask questions, right, like that.

He, you can tell there is an issue in society right now at that time when it comes to divorce.

What Jesus attempts to do is to correct their concepts of divorce by correcting their concepts about marriage because incorrect views of marriage lead to incorrect views of Divorce and by the way incorrect views of marriage lead to incorrect views of dating, which leads to incorrect views of the type of person you should be marrying.

It's all sequential and it's all related.

So the real question has to do with what exactly is marriage.

And Jesus knows that divorce isn't the real issue.

It's rather a fruit of a misconception that they had.

They were abusing what Moses had allowed and permitted.

So they were divorcing their wives for many different reasons.

In fact, you go to certain Middle Eastern cultures today, and you can still have that same type of permission to divorce your wife.

You can just walk over to the court and just get a divorce that very same day.

However, if your wife wants to divorce you that takes several days That's exactly right So the same Eastern culture that does exist now also existed towards Jesus time Incorrect views of marriage lead to incorrect views of divorce.

And so the question is posed to Jesus, Jesus, please tell us about divorce.

And what Jesus does is something extraordinary.

And this is what Jesus does when it comes to marriage.

So everybody continue with this, you're going to see what Jesus does.

It's something so extraordinary Matthew chapter 19 starting with verse 4 and He answered and said to them have you not read that he who made them at the beginning?

Male and female comma first thing to notice about what Jesus is saying when it comes to marriage He quotes from what book in the Bible Genesis.

Does anybody know what part of Genesis he quotes from?

The first chapter of Genesis you're going to actually see the context by which Jesus quotes from.

Everyone take your Bible, go to Genesis chapter 1.

Now when Jesus is trying to correct their views about divorce, he attempts to correct their views about marriage.

And I love what Ellen White says, it is the purpose of the gospel to restore marriage to its purity and its beauty.

Delicious Grape Juice

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