THE ANCIENT SITUATION

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1 TEXT: Malachi 2:10-16 TITLE: Return to Me In Your Faithfulness ILLUSTRATION A few years ago I read a newspaper that had a picture of a huge motor home that was so wrecked it was hardly recognizable. Amazingly the driver and his wife had survived the crash. As I recall the wife was asleep and the husband needed something from the back of the RV. It was a straight stretch of highway, so he figured he could just set the cruise control, slip out of his seat, grab what he needed and get back to the wheel. Well, as you can imagine that was a recipe for disaster. The motor home veered off of the road and crashed. Again, thankfully the man and his wife survived, but I m sure the husband had some explaining to do. Open your Bibles to Malachi 2:10 to where God speaks to His people who have some explaining to do for why they put their faith on cruise control. Let me remind you of what s going on in this part of God s Word. This all happens about 450 years before Christ was born. The Jews in Malachi s day were descendants of those who returned from captivity in Babylon/Persia. They knew the stories of the rebuilding of the Temple and the revival that occurred under the leadership of Ezra and Nehemiah, as well as through the glorious prophecies of Haggai and Zechariah. But all of that was in the past, and the people had put their faith on cruise control. Slowly the priests who were supposed to keep the people challenged to love God and live holy lives shirked their duties. People still went through the motions of going to the Temple, offering sacrifices, saying prayers but their hearts were not in it. They grew complacent and apathetic about the things of God, making it easy for them to begin to compromise on things that used to matter to them. It no longer mattered to them that they should live as God s holy people. They lived around and were enticed by people who worshipped false gods and idols. When your love for God runs cold you lose the ability to fight off the powerful allurements of the world. So powerful was this temptation that Jewish men lusted after women who worshipped false gods. In order to marry them the men had to divorce their Jewish wives. It s hard to imagine that a people who were once so exclusively devoted to Almighty God now lived such compromised lives. So in days of spiritual compromise, apathy and complacency God call us to return to Him to a new faithfulness to Him, to one another and to our families. Read Malachi 2: THE ANCIENT SITUATION - If we re going to hear what God is speaking to us today from His Word we better understand the ancient situation into which God first spoke this truth, then we will be able to draw some contemporary application for living as God s faithful people today. Now reading this passage may have left you scratching your head. The brightest OT scholars in the world admit this is one of the most difficult passages in the Bible. We owe so much to the men and women who studied and researched this enough to be able to give us our English translations, but there s more that needs explanation. Let s start with Malachi 2:10 - Have we not all one Father? Did not one God create us? Why do we profane the covenant of our fathers by breaking faith with one another?

2 There s a word that is used five times in seven verses translated in the NIV by breaking faith. It means to be unfaithful, treacherous or deceitful. It is the opposite of integrity and faithfulness. This unfaithfulness shows up in their relationship with God; they had forgotten the Lord. And when you forget the Lord you forget that you are the people of the Lord. So they were breaking faith being unfaithful to one another in the family of God. God had made a covenant with their ancestors He would be there God and they would be His people. They should be faithful to one another. ILLUSTRATION Years ago I walked into a Starbucks to get coffee and as I stood at the counter I noticed that on the wall back in the kitchen someone had written on a marker board, Be excellent with one another today. But in Malachi s day they were not being excellent with one another they were unfaithful. This so easily happens when we give in to the impulses of selfishness, greed and personal gratification. QUOTE: Thirty-five years ago, social scientist and researcher Daniel Yankelovich wrote this about the cancer of unfaithfulness in our society: A woman finds herself pregnant and wants to abort, or a man feels bogged down by commitments to job, spouse and children, and wants out. A person's aging parents are interfering with his pleasures, and he wants someone to take them off his hands. A man wants to sleep with his secretary, or is tired of making a living and desires relief from his commitments. How we, as a society and as individuals, view the decisions made about fulfilling these desires is the crux of the problem. And Malachi s question is a good question: Why do we break faith with God and with one another? We should be accountable to one another for loving God and loving each other. Now the prophet drives this truth even deeper. Malachi 2:11 - Judah has broken faith. A detestable thing has been committed in Israel and in Jerusalem: Judah has desecrated the sanctuary the LORD loves, by marrying the daughter of a foreign god. The covenant God made with Israel meant that they were to have no other gods before Him. They were to live separated unto the Lord. But now they were marrying pagan women who turned their hearts away from the Lord. And God knew this would be a very real temptation for His people when He commanded them when they were getting ready to go into the Promised Land Deuteronomy 7:3-4 - Do not intermarry with them. Do not give your daughters to their sons or take their daughters for your sons, for they will turn your sons away from following me to serve other gods, and the LORD s anger will burn against you and will quickly destroy you. Now several generations later the people had forgotten the commands of the Lord. By marrying into pagan families they were opening themselves up to all sorts of unholy influences. And this is such a detestable thing that Malachi prays that the evil influence would be removed from Israel.

3 Malachi 2:12 - As for the man who does this, whoever he may be, may the LORD cut him off from the tents of Jacob even though he brings offerings to the LORD Almighty. So here we see again that while all of this immorality is going on they continue to go through the motions of religion going to the Temple, bringing offerings and even shedding tears! Malachi 2:13 - You flood the LORD s altar with tears. You weep and wail because he no longer pays attention to your offerings or accepts them with pleasure from your hands. So these were not tears of true repentance. In spite of the fact that they were openly disobeying God with their immoral relationships they still came to worship, still gave their offerings, still prayed. So why is the Lord rejecting their worship? The answer is in Malachi 2:14 - You ask, Why? It is because the LORD is acting as the witness between you and the wife of your youth, because you have broken faith with her, though she is your partner, the wife of your marriage covenant. So they have broken faith (been unfaithful) with the Lord, with each other and now with their wives. God is saying, Don t be bringing your half-hearted worship and fake tears to Me when you are treating your wife like trash. Notice how Malachi challenges these men to think about their wives. She is the wife of your youth. They had grown old together, now the men were casting them aside. She is your partner. The word literally means companion. What a beautiful picture of biblical marriage. She is the wife of your marriage covenant. Marriage is a covenant with another person, before God. Look at what else is involved in a marriage covenant between a believing man and woman. Malachi 2:15a - Has not the LORD made them one? In flesh and spirit they are his. And why one? Because he was seeking godly offspring. One of the divine purposes for marriage is to bring from godly marriages godly offspring. Our faith as the people of God is passed to our children who will carry on the legacy of the worship of the One True God. And this divine design is what causes God to be so zealous for the sanctity of marriage and the permanence of marriage that He commands in v.15, Guard yourself in your spirit and don t be unfaithful to your wife. Malachi 2:16a - I hate divorce, says the LORD God of Israel, and I hate a man s covering himself with violence as well as with his garment, says the LORD Almighty. Now I said earlier that this passage is one of the most difficult to translate, and that s why here in v.16 you have English translations that differ. The NIV I m using today says that the God of Israel (the only time in the Bible God refers to Himself with that title) hates or detests divorce. The ESV has a different translation that shows that the hate is in the heart of the man who divorces his wife.

4 And in doing that he is guilty of violence toward her. Either way it s clear what God thinks about divorce. Some of my best friends have lived through the tragedy of divorce. And the very mention of the word rips at your heart today. Some of you destroyed your marriage by unfaithfulness; others were the victim of your mate s unfaithfulness. When it says God hates divorce it means that He detests everything about it everything that leads to it. So there are husbands or wives who would never think of divorce but who are being unfaithful to their mates emotionally, physically or sexually. And the challenge comes again in v.16: Guard yourself in your spirit and don t deal treacherously with your mate. So with that understanding of the ancient situation we need THE CONTEMPORARY APPLICATION There s no way I can answer in this one message all the questions you have about marriage, divorce or remarriage, but let me give you five areas where we as believers can guard our spirits and be faithful to the Lord and others. Five ways to show integrity: 1. RELATIONAL INTEGRITY Malachi asks in v.10, Why do we disrespect the covenant God has made with us by being unfaithful to one another? We have one heavenly Father, one Creator God and one Savior, His Son, Jesus Christ. We should be people of integrity toward one another. Hebrews 3: See to it, brothers, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God. But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called Today, so that none of you may be hardened by sin s deceitfulness. So let s be excellent with each other. Show relational integrity. This is also a call to 2. SEXUAL INTEGRITY We are living in the days of a great sexual revolution. Pornography, sex outside of the marriage (whether heterosexual or homosexual), same-sex marriage, gender confusion are all pervasive. It s a time when believers need to demonstrate sexual integrity faithfulness to God, to our mates or our future mates. 1 Thessalonians 4:3-5 - It is God s will that you should be sanctified: that you should avoid sexual immorality; that each of you should learn to control his own body in a way that is holy and honorable, not in passionate lust like the heathen, who do not know God; We are called to relational and sexual integrity, but also to 3. SPIRITUAL INTEGRITY

5 Malachi 2:11b - Judah has desecrated the sanctuary the LORD loves, by marrying the daughter of a foreign god. If we claim to know and love God then we cannot unite ourselves in the most intimate human relationship of marriage with an unbeliever. 2 Corinthians 6:14, 16 - Do not be yoked together with unbelievers. For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness? What agreement is there between the temple of God and idols? For we are the temple of the living God. As God has said: I will live with them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they will be my people. Single adults, settle the issue now that you will never marry anyone who isn t committed to Christ. If you are already married to a non-believer, pray fervently for their salvation and live a holy life before them. The Word calls for spiritual integrity. Another important implication of these verses is 4. MARITAL INTEGRITY Again, in Malachi 2:14 the Lord is a witness against His people who have broken faith with their spouses the wife of your marriage covenant. When you stand at the altar of marriage God stands there also as a witness to the covenant promises you are making to one another. It s like the Lord is saying, The covenant you are making to one another is a mirror image of the covenant that I have made with my people. I will be faithful to them no matter what, and you must be faithful to one another till death do you part. In our sexually confused culture we need to lift up the enduring standard of Jesus for marriage: Matthew 19:4-6 - Haven t you read, he replied, that at the beginning the Creator made them male and female, and said, For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh? So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate. If you ve been divorced, put the past behind you. If it was due to your unfaithfulness, repent and ask God for forgiveness. Ask your ex-spouse for forgiveness. It s not the unpardonable sin. From this day forward you can live in the will of God. Before you marry again, please get biblical counsel. The NT gives guidelines for when remarriage is acceptable. And that leads to the last application. We are called to 5. PARENTAL INTEGRITY One reason for guarding the marriage relationship is that God wants godly children to come from godly marriages. Malachi 2:15b - And why one? Because he was seeking godly offspring.

6 In fact, later the Lord through Malachi will point to a day on the horizon when God will send the Messiah to redeem lost humanity. Before the Messiah came God would send a prophet like Elijah (John the Baptist). Malachi 4:6a - He will turn the hearts of the parents to their children, and the hearts of the children to their parents Twice in these verses the Lord commands us, Guard yourself in your spirit and do not be unfaithful. Keep watch over your spirit because that s where it all starts. Then be faithful. Repent. Receive God s forgiveness. Rejoice. Respond.