Malachi 2:10-16

When the truth and power of God begin to fade from the Christian community, two other things will be removed from the Christian community as well, they are:

1. the clarity of vision to avoid moral traps, and

2. the strength to stand upright when the whole world would drag you down.

When there is a famine of the Word of God in the land, when the Word of God is not upheld, and believed, the spiritual nutrients that enable the eye to spot sin as sin are gone. And the spiritual protein that gives strength the moral muscle of the soul to do what is right is missing.

The spiritual eye becomes diseased through malnutrition, and the clear lines between sin and righteousness begin to blur. The moral muscle of the will atrophies, and weakens, and the result is that the beckoning of the world wins because there is no strength to stand against it. When the ministry of the Word goes wrong, many are caused to stumble.

Like the old preacher Vance Havner said, “when the white sheep become a dull gray, the black sheep don’t feel so bad anymore.”

The text speaks to three areas where the people of Israel were stumbling.

1. In the general area of personal relationships: “Why then are we faithless to one another?” There was widespread dishonesty. People were not keeping their word. Trusts were being broken. Why can we not trust each other? Why all this breaking of faith?

2. In the specific area of marriage to unbelievers. The last line of verse 11 says that Judah “has married the daughter of a foreign God.” That means that many of the men were marrying women who were not believers in the true God. This was a very serious stumbling in the eyes of God.

3. In the specific area of divorce.

Our purpose is to strengthen our spiritual ability to resist three temptations: the temptation to break a trust in our relationships, the temptation to marry an unbeliever, and the temptation to divorce our spouse. One or more of those applies to every person in this room from childhood to the oldest among us.

Now that leaves a hundred unanswered questions.

What if someone breaks trust with you?

What if your child marries an unbeliever?

What if your spouse abandons you and presses you for divorce?

The Bible has something to say for our guidance in all these areas.

If a person is willing to receive it, and if the biblical guidelines are properly applied, our lives can be made more upright, we can be spared many pains, and our moral backbone can be greatly strengthened.

1. Malachi 2:10 General Relationships

Malachi tells us God’s will for our relationships in general, and gives us three reasons why we should be eager to do it.

Have we not all one Father? Has not one God created us? Why then are we faithless to one another, profaning the covenant of our fathers?

The will of God for his people is plain from this verse. He wills that we are faithful to each other. This word for “be faithless” or “break faith” or “deal treacherously” are used in all three of the sections of our text this morning (2:10–16).

It is referring to general untrustworthiness in our relationships.

So the sin that runs through each of these areas of life is this failure to keep a trust, the failure to keep a commitment. It is the breaking of an agreement or covenant or contract or promise.

Malachi shows that community life is supposed to be ordered by the faithful fulfillment of promises, contracts, oaths, covenants and commitments. But this order has given way to the disorder that comes when people give in to the power of self-centered emotional impulses.

All relationships are made peaceful and pure by the fulfillment of covenants and promises and oaths and contracts and commitments. Children to parents, and parents to children. Husbands to wives and wives to husbands. Employer to employee and employee to employer. Citizen to state and state to citizen. The peace and prosperity and joy—the shalom—of the community is held together by the deep strong spirit of covenant-keeping that pervades the community. The very fabric of the community is the trustworthiness of its people.

Do they keep their commitments?

The other way for people to try to live together in community is the opposite of covenantal order; it’s what you might call the disorder of self-indulgence. In this community the spirit of commitment-making and commitment-keeping has been replaced by a spirit of emotional and. The moral fabric of faithfulness to covenants and promises and contracts is unraveled and what’s left are the individual strands of private gratification.

Malachi’s message to us this morning could hardly be more relevant or more needed. He warns against the pseudo-freedom of individualistic self-indulgence, and he tries to help us see the strength and beauty and joy and peace (shalom) of being faithful in all our relationships and all our commitments.

Reasons for Faithfulness to One Another

1. We have one Father: In other words when we betray a trust, we betray the family of God. We deceive our own flesh and we dishonor our God our Father.

2. We have one Creator. “Has not one God created us?” (v. 10). If I am faithless to you, and break my commitment to you, I act as though you and I are accountable to two different Creators. I act as though my Creator lets me function on one set of terms, like self-indulgence that ignores my commitment to you, while I expect your Creator to hold you to another set of terms, like respect for my rights and stay off my case. But if we are both utterly dependent upon and accountable to one and the same Creator, that double standard will not do.

3. The third reason we should not break faith with others is that it profanes the covenant of our fathers. “Why then are we faithless to one another, profaning the covenant of our fathers?”
What was this covenant? It was God’s commitment to be Abraham’s God, to work for him and bless him and give him life and hope, and not only him but all his true offspring, including you and me in Jesus Christ the seed of Abraham.

Whenever we lie or fudge on our duties, or betray a trust, we act as though God is not able to take care of us and protect us and give us a fulfilling life if we keep our commitments. And when we act as though God cannot or will not give us what is best for us on the path of faithfulness, we profane his covenant. We act as though it is untrustworthy and worthless.

As believers, we ,have one Father; one God created us; and his covenant with us in Jesus Christ is the guarantee of his help and friendship. Therefore, let’s be a people of radical integrity and faithfulness in all our dealings whatever it costs!

We Must Guard Against Marriage to Unbelievers

Malachi moves from relationships in general to the specific issue of marrying unbelievers. God regards this as another instance of being faithless or breaking trust. He calls it an abomination.

Why is that?

V11 Judah has been faithless, and abomination has been committed in Israel and in Jerusalem; for Judah has profaned the sanctuary [literally: the holiness] of the Lord, which he loves, and has married the daughter of a foreign god.

The primary issue here is that the person that the man of Judah was marrying did not love and trust and follow Jehovah, the true God of Israel. She was not a daughter of the true God; she was a daughter of a foreign god.

The point of the verse is that when we claim to love God with all our heart and soul and mind and strength, and then willfully choose to unite ourselves with an unbeliever in the most intimate personal union on earth, we profane the holiness of God. We act as though our
emotional drive for human intimacy is more important than affirming the preciousness of God’s holiness and nearness.

God calls this choice an abomination and he says in verse 12 that those who walk into it with their eyes open are asking for God to turn his back on them. “May the Lord cut off from the tents of Jacob, for the man who does this, any to witness or answer, or to bring an offering to the Lord of hosts!”

Malachi had in mind numerous instances. The phrase “foreign god,” which also occurs in Deut 32:12 and Ps 81:9 “foreign god,” in Dan 11:39), refers to any god other than Yahweh the God of Israel, the God who delivered them from Egypt and entered into an exclusive covenant relationship with them

The term “foreign” should not be assumed to have had a neutral connotation as it does in our pluralistic society. It rather described something dangerous and threatening, as suggested by its cognates “hostile, enemy”.

The Old Testament repeatedly demonstrates that the presence of such “foreign gods” threatened a relationship with Yahweh the loving God and obstructed his worship.
Psalms 81:9 Israel is told, “Let there not be among you a strange god, and do not worship a foreign god.”

The “daughter of a foreign god” refers collectively to women outside the community of faith, foreign pagans who worshiped a god other than the Lord. Foreigners are elsewhere referred to as children of their god (Num 21:29), as the people of Israel were considered the Lord’s offspring.
Judah’s sin was literal marriage outside the community of faith; the Lord’s sons (v. 10) were marrying the daughters of pagan gods and thus treacherously introducing into the covenant family of Israel the elements of its destruction.

Marriage outside the covenant community (specifically with the Canaanites) was forbidden by Moses, not for reasons of racial or ethnic exclusivism but because “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” (Deut 7:3–4; cf. Exod 34:11–16; Neh 13:26).

The corruption of the human heart is already a strong enough foe to righteousness without inviting enticement to sin into one’s home through marriage to one who is still in bondage to the spiritual powers of wickedness (cf. Deut 13:6–11; 31:20–21).

Israel’s history offers abundant examples of the spiritual dangers of entering relationships with unbelievers (cf. Josh 23:7, 12–13; Judge 2:1–3; 3:5–7; Ps 106:35; 1 Kgs 11:4–10; Jer 44:15–19; 2 Cor 6:14–17).
Nevertheless, Ezra 9 and Neh 13:23–30 confirm that the problem continued in the postexilic community, even among the priests. Malachi gave no indication of how many were guilty of this treachery, only that the problem and the guilt could be described collectively as “Judah’s.”

As a penalty it seems to have been a divine sentence of condemnation that would eventually result in the cessation of one’s name from the family of Israel (. Num 27:4; 1 Sam 24:21) and implied exclusion from peace in the afterlife. Although physical death might not occur immediately, it would continually hang over the condemned person with its threat of eternal ruin.

This text is saying clearly this morning: if the choice of marriage partner still lies before you, settle it in your mind right now never to marry anyone that does not love the Lord Jesus with all his or her heart.

We Have to Be Careful with Divorce

Malachi turns to the third and final instance of acting faithlessly, namely, divorcing a spouse.

An important question is how the instances of intermarriage were related to the instances of divorce. On the one hand each is treated separately and condemned. This argues against those who would see vv. 10–16 as concerned with only one issue, either spiritual apostasy, marriage to pagan women, or divorce.

It may be that both intermarriage and divorce are simply examples of unfaithfulness. On the other hand, intermarriage can only indirectly be described as “breaking faith with one another.”

Consequently, many understand the practice of divorce condemned in vv. 13–15a as logically related to the intermarriage of vv. 11–12—Jewish men were divorcing their Jewish wives because they were entering advantageous marriages with pagan women.

Otherwise the question remains unanswered about why the men were divorcing their wives. Nevertheless, the passage never makes explicit this connection between intermarriage and divorce, and the rejected women are not explicitly identified as Jewish.

It seems likely that the prophet had in mind the entire scenario of Jewish men abandoning their Jewish wives for pagan ones but that he wanted to condemn each aspect of this behavior separately since not all who were guilty of abandoning their wives were doing so for purposes of intermarriage (although all surely had remarriage in mind), and not all those who were intermarrying had to abandon wives to do so.

But why is the problem of divorce dealt with after the problem of intermarriage?

The weeping and groaning of Malachi’s contemporaries did not result as it should have from their repentance, but from their grief or even anger at the Lord’s refusal to accept their offerings Cain’s response in Gen 4:4–5

V13 Whereas Judah had expected the Lord to receive their offerings “with pleasure,” the offerings were actually detestable to him because Judah’s behavior was “detestable” Rom 8:8; 1 Thess 4:1; Heb 11:6).

Malachi would echo the thought of Isa 58:3–10, where God charges, “on the day of your fasting, you do as you please and exploit all your workers.” God’s people had not yet learned the lesson that religious activity in itself cannot please God

2:14 The answer to the people’s question and complaint is that the men have betrayed their wives. The reason the men’s behavior can be called treachery is that their wives had entered a covenant with them. The assumption is that the men have violated that covenant.

One’s wife was a spiritual sibling, a member of the covenant community of Israel, these wives had allied themselves with their husbands by a marriage covenant.

1) First, if a covenant existed between a husband and his wife, any offence against the marriage by either the husband or the wife may be identified as sin.
2) Second, if a covenant existed between a husband and his wife, because God is invoked in any covenant-ratifying oath to act as guarantor of the covenant, any marital offence by either the husband or the wife may be identified as sin against God.
3) Third, any marital infidelity ought to prompt God’s judgment against the offending party.
4) Finally, intermarriage with pagans ought to be prohibited because idolatry would necessarily ensue when a ratifying oath is sworn.

Judah’s behavior was an insult and outrage against the God before whom they had formed their covenants. As in the covenant between Jacob and Laban in Gen 31:50, the Lord being witness meant that he would act as “judge” to ensure that if the covenant was violated the guilty party would be punished.

God refuses to accept the offerings of the people, and they ask,

“Why does he not?” And the answer is given:

Because the Lord was witness to the covenant between you and the wife of your youth,

“A covenant that is made before God.”

That is the essence of marriage. And when God stands as witness to the covenant promises of a marriage, it becomes more than a merely human agreement. God is not a passive bystander at a wedding ceremony. In effect he says, I have seen this, I confirm it, and I record it in heaven. And I bestow upon this covenant by my presence and my blessing.

Wherever you are in your relationships, and none of us is precisely where we should be, remember these words of the covenant: “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin” (Exodus 34:6–7).

v15a serves as the final expression of the situation addressed in this second discourse, describing the reprehensible nature of Judah’s behavior that needed correction to avoid God’s judgment.

The prophet’s concluding exhortation is guard yourself in your spirit, and do not break faith.

This is a strong warning to every husband that he must be constantly on his guard against developing a negative attitude toward his wife. C. J. Collins says,

“He who is wise will watch for the first stirrings of resentment, which might turn into dislike, and repent of it immediately, lest he deal treacherously with her whom the Lord has given to be a blessing.”

“Don’t you know that God made you one with your wives? And in spite of your treachery in divorcing your wives, there is still a remnant of that spiritual bond. And what is the purpose of that oneness? It is to produce godly offspring with God’s help.”