Instructions For Ministers Series

Scripture Introduction:

Please turn to Malachi 2:10-16. Do you know what treacherous living looks like? In this passage God is going to reveal what He calls treacherous living. FCF: People deal treacherously against their brother. Why does God reject offerings? Mal. 2:10-16

Introduction:

According to Dr. Lana Staneli, author of a book on marital triangles, “Of those who break up their marriage to marry someone else, eighty percent are sorry later. Of those who do marry their lover, which is only about ten percent, about seventy percent of them get a divorce. Of that twenty-five to thirty percent that stay married, only half of them are happy. Having an affair is an invitation to an awful lot of pain and tragedy.”

Laura Schlessinger, The Ten Commandments: The Significance of God’s Laws in Everyday Life (New York: HarperCollins, 1998), 223-224.

The Main Point: Since Christ is your Father, you must be faithful in your familial relationships.

The theme: Christ loves with unchanging love; therefore, respond to Him with reverence.

Give attention to His message, His messenger and His method (using His pattern of ministry).

How has God loved you? He elected you and He keeps you from being consumed.

How have we despised His name? Through actions that thwart His universal plan (making His name great among the nations) and through actions that violate His character (acting out of divine character). It is practicing irreverence through corrupt worship (cheap and heartless).

Who is to blame? First, His ministers who fail to honor His name. They receive a curse and must change their ways, to obey and reverence Him as they instruct His people. Secondly, the people are to blame.

Why did God give us this passage?

He is disgusted with His people’s treacherous living.

What is God doing in this passage?

He is revealing His will regarding our relationships with each other: specifically in marriage (10, 14).

Why is this important to me?

God rejects the offerings (worship) of those who practice treacherous living and He deals with it severely.

Why does God reject offerings?

I. People profane their covenant with God. v. 10-12

Desecrate, defile, debase, violate, corrupt, abuse

Isa 63:16 For You are our Father… You, O LORD, are our Father, Our Redeemer from of old is Your name. (Ex. 19:8)

Corrupt practices are the genuine fruit and product of corrupt principles. Matt Henry

A. By dealing treacherously with family members (10).

Job 31:15 "Did not He who made me in the womb make him, And the same one fashion us in the womb?

1Co 3:16 Do you not know that you are a temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?

Eph 4:6 one God and Father of all who is over all and through all and in all.

1. Treacherous against your brother

2. Those who have been set apart to God

B. By dealing treacherously with God’s sanctuary (11).

Ezra (457 B.C.), Nehemiah (445 B.C.), Hosea (780 B.C.)

Hos 6:7 But like Adam they have transgressed the covenant; There they have dealt treacherously against Me.

1. It is an abomination to marry a non-believer.

2. It is spiritual adultery (infidelity)

1Co 6:15-16 Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take away the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? May it never be! 16 Or do you not know that the one who joins himself to a prostitute is one body with her? For He says, "THE TWO SHALL BECOME ONE FLESH."

C. By dealing treacherously one incites God’s judgment (12)

Incite-Spark, prompt, provoke, encourage

1. God will cut him off (utterly destroy).

2. His family will be cut off.

Those who entered mixed marriages would be cut off. BBC

The general intent of the idiom is clear: the entirety of the transgressor's family—or as we would say today, both "root and branch"—would suffer the "cutting off." Preacher

ILLUSTRATION

Christians living with unsaved… Christians marrying the unsaved…

Just as God judged these Israelites, He will also judge us.

Application:

So what? God demands and expects fidelity (faithfulness) in your familial relationships (to Him and to your spouse).

Why? God is a jealous God (Exodus 34:14-16)

Now what? Be faithful to the Lord! Don’t chase after those that would cause you to be defiled! Protect yourself….

Pro 4:23 Watch over your heart with all diligence, For from it flow the springs of life.

• Keep your heart above all keeping

The mind is the fountain from which the actions spring. If the fountain is pure, the stream that flows from it will be pure. As a man thinks, so is he. BBC

Why does God reject offerings?

Transitional Statement: First, people profane their covenant with God; secondly, people profane their marital covenants.

II. People profane their marital covenants. v. 13-16