Don’t Play Head Games with God!

Encountering Jesus

Allen Snapp

Grace Community Church

June 21, 2026

Don’t Play Head Games with God!

“It was also said, ‘Whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce.’ But I say to you that everyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of sexual immorality, makes her commit adultery, and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery. Again you have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not swear falsely, but shall perform to the Lord what you have sworn.’ But I say to you, Do not take an oath at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God, or by the earth, for it is his footstool, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King. And do not take an oath by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or black. Let what you say be simply ‘Yes’ or ‘No’; anything more than this comes from evil. (Matthew 5:31-37 ESV)

When employers are asked to give a reference for a former employee, many stick to a very narrow and careful script because they’re afraid if they share honestly about the poor work habits of a former employee they might end up in legal jeopardy. So someone came up with creative phrases that make a negative reference sound like a positive one.

For an employee who is chronically absent: a man like him is hard to find.

For a lazy employee: You would be fortunate indeed to get this person to work for you.

For an employee who is totally inept:
"I enthusiastically recommend this candidate with no qualifications whatsoever."

For an employee who had problems getting along with fellow workers:
"I am pleased to say that this candidate is a former colleague of mine."

For an employee who messes things up so badly it would be better to leave the job undone:
"I can assure you that no person would be better for the job."

For an employee who is not worth being considered:
"I would urge you to waste no time in making this candidate an offer of employment."

These play head games with us. Is this a positive or a negative reference? It can go either way. Word games in this context are funny and harmless – it’s doubtful any responsible employer would ever do this. Politicians do it all the time! When a politician says, “let me be clear” the last thing to expect is clarity. “Let me be clear” means I want to leave the impression that I am being clear while using language so ambiguous that later I can claim it meant the exact opposite of what you thought it meant.

One of the problems in Jesus’ day – and I believe it’s what Jesus is addressing here – is that the religious leaders got really good at taking God’s clear word and muddying it up. They were playing word games with God’s word so that they could make God’s word say what they wanted it to say rather than what God’s word actually says.

At first glance the two commandments Jesus talks about – divorce and swearing oaths – seem unrelated – until we see what the religious leaders were doing with these two commandments. Let’s look at each section separately.

“It was also said, ‘Whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce.’ But I say to you that everyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of sexual immorality, makes her commit adultery, and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery. Vv. 31-32

Scholars agree that Jesus is not attempting to be exhaustive in his teaching on divorce in these verses. He will have more to say about divorce in Matt. 19 and the Bible has more to say about divorce and remarriage than what is contained in these two verses. I am not going to go into divorce and remarriage at great length this morning, but if you want a more in-depth message on that topic, I did a message called God Hates Violence to the Vows last November in the series The Messenger, the Message, and the Mess if you want to listen to that. You can find that at our website at gracecorning.org

Contextually however, Jesus is addressing a debate that was raging in his day over the meaning of Deut. 24:1 which says that if a man marries a woman and finds "something indecent" about her, he can write her a certificate of divorce. God gives permission, not a command. But the meaning of the Hebrew “indecent” means “uncleanness” or nakedness meaning some type of moral uncleanness on her part. But a rabbi named Hillel who lived a 100 years before Jesus taught that what Moses meant was if a man finds any cause in his wife that makes him not want to be married to her, he was free to write out a certificate of divorce. This became a debate and in Matt. 19:3 the Pharisees try to trip Jesus up on this divisive debate:

And Pharisees came up to him and tested him by asking, “Is it lawful to divorce one's wife for any cause?” (Matthew 19:3 ESV)

God had made it clear that marriage was the joining of a husband and wife as one flesh, and what God has joined together is not to be lightly separated by men. But these religious leaders played word games with scripture in order to arrive at the opposite of what God intended. Instead of marriage being a sacred union NOT to be lightly broken, God's word was now being used to justify a man divorcing his wife for any cause whatsoever if she ceased to please him.

You find out that pretty little girl you married is a lousy cook? Give her a certificate of divorce. Want to trade in your wife for a younger model? No problem, just write out a certificate of divorce. Easier than returning something to Amazon. Any cause.

These people were twisting God’s word to say what they wanted it to say. Their agenda was governing their lives more than God’s word.

Jesus brings them back to the sanctity of marriage in God’s eyes and states that anyone who casually divorces his wife is guilty of adultery in God's sight. God's word does provide grounds for divorce when violence has been done to the marriage vows such as sexual immorality or abandonment or physical or mental abuse. The heart of scriptural allowances of divorce is to protect either spouse from being chained to the shell of a marriage where the vows have been violated or abandoned. A certificate of divorce helped to protect a wife from being sent out by the husband without having the freedom to remarry that a legitimate divorce certificate provides. The spirit of the laws God laid out was to protect the innocent victims, but the religious leaders had twisted it into a "get out of marriage free" card for the man, resulting in women being abandoned by fickle husbands and victimized by casual divorce. The end result was the opposite of what God intended: women were getting hurt, marriages were being terminated, men were being unfaithful to their vows.

When we come to God's word we need to be careful that we don’t read what we want into it and squeeze what we don’t like out of it. We need to be so careful that we aren't bending God's word to fit our agenda instead of bending our agenda to fit God's word. If we believe that God's word is authoritative and inerrant then we must be willing to submit our thoughts, beliefs, and convictions to His word, regardless of how much we want or our culture wants us to believe something different. We must not twist God's word to say what we want to hear. Peter warns that there are some who twist the scriptures to their own destruction.

Again you have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not swear falsely, but shall perform to the Lord what you have sworn.’ But I say to you, Do not take an oath at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God, or by the earth, for it is his footstool, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King. And do not take an oath by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or black. Let what you say be simply ‘Yes’ or ‘No’; anything more than this comes from evil. Vv. 33-37

The simple command in the OT was that if you swore a vow to the Lord, you needed to fulfill that vow. But the Pharisees had taken the practice of oaths and vows and had corrupted it by coming up with a complicated system of rankings where some vows you needed to keep and some you didn't. Jesus calls them out on this in Matt. 23:16-22

“Woe to you, blind guides, who say, ‘If anyone swears by the temple, it is nothing, but if anyone swears by the gold of the temple, he is bound by his oath.’ You blind fools! For which is greater, the gold or the temple that has made the gold sacred? And you say, ‘If anyone swears by the altar, it is nothing, but if anyone swears by the gift that is on the altar, he is bound by his oath.’ You blind men! For which is greater, the gift or the altar that makes the gift sacred? So whoever swears by the altar swears by it and by everything on it. And whoever swears by the temple swears by it and by him who dwells in it. And whoever swears by heaven swears by the throne of God and by him who sits upon it. (Matthew 23:16-22 ESV)

When I was a kid, if we wanted to prove that we were being truthful we would say, "cross my heart and hope to die." That was an oath with a curse attached: if I'm lying may I be struck dead. But as serious as this oath was, there were legal loopholes, if you knew what they were. Crossing your fingers behind your back overrode any vow. Crossing your fingers behind your back gave you legal permission to lie and feel good about it.

In a similar way, the Pharisees and scribes said, if you swear by the temple, no big deal if you don’t keep your oath. But if you swore by the gold in the temple, then you are bound. If you swore by the altar it means nothing. But the gift on the altar? Then your bound.

First of all the religious leaders had their priorities totally messed up. They felt the more you zeroed in - from the temple to the gold in the temple, from the altar to the gift on the altar - the more serious the vow. But Jesus points out that the temple and the altar represented God’s presence among men, and the reason the gold and the gift were holy is because they were in the temple and on the altar. Their priorities were all mixed up.

But the deeper issue was that they came up with a system of crossed fingers behind their backs. Swearing by the temple gave them two great benefits: they gave the impression of being men of their word, and they didn't have to keep their word. They gave the impression of telling the truth while being free to lie. They baked their agendas and hypocrisy and head games into their religion and thought it was ok. But it wasn't ok with God, it was an abomination.

Relationships are built on honesty and trust. We can trust God because He is always truthful and He always keeps His promises. We are fallen and flawed, but we should strive to be men and women of our word. We should strive to be honest. And we should strive to not play head games.

Head games are fooling ourselves into thinking that God says we can divorce for any cause. Head games are thinking that it’s ok to break our word if we cross our fingers when we give it. Head games are twisting the Bible to say what we want it to say and silencing it when we don’t like what it says. Head games are telling half-truths to make us look like something we aren't. Head games are manipulating people to get what we want. Head games are saying what we think people want to hear so they like us. Head games are acting like someone is our best friend when they're around and bad-mouthing them when they're not.

Spiritual head games – or head games of any kind - is never what Jesus wants. Jesus calls us as his followers to be honest, pure and simple. What you see is what you get kind of people. Trustworthy kind of people. Kingdom relationships are built on loving God and loving others and honestly seeking God's word to govern how we live and how we treat one another.

Let's pray and ask God to help us submit our lives to Him and His word.