Tuesday, September 4

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Malachi 2:10-16

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?

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. 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.

Another thing you do: 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. 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.

Has not the Lord make them one? In flesh and spirit they are his. And why one? Because he is seeking godly offspring. So guard yourself in your spirit, and do not break faith with the wife of your youth.

“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.

So guard yourself in your spirit and do not break faith.

As a pastor, I have had the heart-breaking privilege and responsibility of listening to many married couples as they wrestle with issues that threaten the survival of the marriage covenant. Most often those issues develop very slowly, almost imperceptibly, over time until husband or wife finally determines that his or her love is dead and/or enters into behavior that destroys the covenant.

There is hardly anything as painful to watch as the destruction of a covenant that is intended to be holy.

That’s what God is saying through Malachi.

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?

What does the prophet mean by “breaking faith with one another”?

To understand what the prophet is talking about we need to know something about the economic culture of the time. Judah was now inhabited by both Jews and gentiles – that is, non-Jewish people from surrounding nations. As the Israelites returned from exile in Babylon they discovered that the merchant guilds and trading cartels already in place were run by foreigners. In order to gain access to these guilds many Jewish men had begun to divorce their Jewish wives and marry foreign women. And, inevitably, when these marriages took place, the men began to adopt the pagan worship practices of their wives.

So, basically, men were divorcing their wives – breaking the holy covenant of marriage that God had established for his people – in order to get better jobs.

In a way, I think, this is a precursor to the increasingly “casual” approach of our own culture to the covenant of marriage.

Throughout the Bible marriage is consistently defined as one man joined to one woman in a life-long covenant relationship. In Genesis we read:

For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh. Genesis 2:24

That’s it; that’s the clearest definition of Biblical marriage that we have.

Now, what about those who have expanded and distorted this definition of marriage? 

Do we hate them? NO!

Are we called to love them and treat them with the same respect Jesus offered to religious and irreligious people alike?   YES!

Are they welcome in the church of Jesus Christ? YES! Everyone is welcome to seek God in worship and the word.

Does that then mean that we change the teaching of God’s word – to accommodate the changing mores and trends of our culture? NO!

We teach God’s word with compassion and grace – but we teach the truth unapologetically.

Furthermore, from cover to cover the Bible portrays the covenant of marriage to be symbolic of God’s own covenant love for his people.

Heaven itself is described as the “wedding supper of the Lamb” (Revelation 19:9) as Christ is joined by his bride, the Church.

So when the men of Israel divorce their wives out of convenience and economic expediency, God is disgusted.

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. 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.

(v. 16) “I hate divorce,” says the Lord God of Israel…”

A couple of things here: first, notice God says, “I hate divorce,” and not, “I hate divorced people.” Those are two very different things. 

God hates divorce because it destroys a covenant designed to be holy and permanent. God hates divorce because it brings pain and brokenness to a relationship he designed to reflect his own steadfast love and joy.

But God loves divorced people and offers his own grace, forgiveness and restoration. Remember that the whole book of Malachi began with God’s resounding promise, “I have loved you.”

For those who are married, God calls your marriage to be a reflection of his own steadfast and utterly faithful love.

For those who are not married, God has established a vision for what marriage can and should be – don’t settle for less!

For all of us, God invites us into a covenant relationship with himself; a relationship defined by love, faithfulness and spiritual intimacy. Do you know God like that?

Pastor Brian Coffey