I wonder have you ever thought of yourself as fitting the archetype of the English Gentleman. Have you ever felt a desire to be considered such a person? I don’t mean that you wanted to wear a bowler hat and carry an umbrella or eat cucumber sandwiches for afternoon tea. What I was thinking about was the old saying that a gentleman’s word is his bond. Do you want people to think of you as someone who’s word can always be trusted?
Well, that should be true of every Christian, shouldn’t it? When we commit ourselves to something we of all people should carry it through. In the sermon on the mount Jesus said: "Do not swear at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God, 35or by the earth, for it is his footstool, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King. 36And do not swear by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or black. 37Let your word be ’Yes, Yes’ or ’No, No’; anything more than this comes from the evil one." In other words, we should be people who are always faithful to our commitments.
Well, today’s passage from Mal 2 has a lot to say about being faithful. There’s the issue of faithfulness to the covenant community, there’s the issue of faithfulness to God’s temple, there’s the issue of faithfulness to our spouse and overarching it all is the issue of faithfulness to God himself.
The thing that I guess stands out for us in this passage is the attitude that God expresses to divorce. Here we have the strongest statement in the Old Testament about what God thinks of divorce. He says: "I hate divorce." And what’s the issue? It’s the fact that they’re breaking the covenant they’ve made with their wives. That in turn, as we’ll see in a moment, is indicative of the fact that they’ve failed in their covenant faithfulness to God.
But we’re jumping ahead aren’t we? As I said, the issue here is faithfulness: covenant faithfulness to God and the resulting faithfulness to one another; or the lack of it.
He begins by reminding them of their origins. He says they all have one father. So who is he thinking of? Adam perhaps? No, he’s thinking of Abraham. He wants to remind them of the covenant God made with Abraham and his descendants forever, but also to remind them of the fact that they’re all brothers and sisters in God’s eyes. So he says, "Why then are we faithless to one another, profaning the covenant of our ancestors?" Why, when we’re brothers and sisters, can’t we be faithful to one another?
So how have they been faithless? Look at v11. What’s been happening is that the men have started going to the neighbouring nations and taking their women in marriage.
Do you remember how I said in the first sermon in this series that they were complaining that the blessings they were expecting from God hadn’t eventuated? Well it seems likely that they were marrying these women to make strategic alliances with their families in order to ensure their economic security. It’s ironic, isn’t it, that the strategy they came up with to ensure their economic security was the very thing that God says is stopping them from receiving his blessing. They can weep and groan as much as they like, but God isn’t going to treat their offerings with favour as long as they’re ignoring his covenant with them. What’s really sad is that despite their recent experience of the exile they’re making the same mistake all over again. You see, what these men are doing is repeating the mistake made by the first Israelites when they entered Canaan, of intermarrying with the local people with the result that they were led astray to worship false gods.
And as if that weren’t enough, some of them are even going to the extent of divorcing their wives in order to enter into these alliances. Not only were they breaking faith with God and the community but they were also breaking faith with the wife of their youth, their companion, or partner. There’s the idea here of a mutual relationship where they’ve worked together for a common purpose; and now it’s all been destroyed in the blink of an eye. Their lack of faith in God has resulted in faithlessness to their wife.
And so he gives them this warning: "I hate divorce." Why? Because it indicates a faithlessness not just to the wife but to God.
This is a warning to us in this age of easy divorce, that God takes very seriously the promises we make before him. Notice he says "The LORD was a witness between you and the wife of your youth." This isn’t just a broken promise, like when you say you’ll be home by ten o’clock and you don’t arrive home until 10:30. No, this is a covenant entered into, with God as your witness. So if you’re married be very careful that you never even contemplate being unfaithful to your spouse. And that means not at any level, because most affairs begin at a relatively innocent level and only slowly escalate into a full blown affair that threatens a marriage. And why is this so important? Not just because your wife or husband will be hurt. Not even because of the vengeance they might wreak on you or how costly divorce tends to be. No, it’s important because God cares; because God will judge. And the warning is so serious because the result might be that we’re cut off from the people of God (v12).
But let’s think about how else this warning might apply to us, both those who are single and those who wouldn’t ever have an affair and divorce their spouse. The issue of divorce here seems central both because of how strong God’s condemnation of it is and because it’s something that we’re so familiar with in our western democracies. But it’s only an example, a symptom of the real problem. Look at v10. Can you see what the real issue is? "Why then are we faithless to one another, profaning the covenant of our ancestors?" The real issue is the faithlessness being shown to the covenant community and by extension to God with whom the covenant was made. Instead of remaining faithful to the people of God, they were chasing after anyone who seemed to offer them the security and prosperity they desired. They claimed to be members of God’s people but when it came to the crunch, God’s people weren’t their top priority.
So the issue for us, assuming we’re not considering having an affair or divorcing our spouse, is how do we relate to our Christian brothers and sisters? Do we treat them as our first priority, as important as our physical brothers and sisters, children or parents? Do we believe that we all have just one father, since God has adopted us as his children? Do we think of ourselves as the brothers and sisters of Christ and therefore bound to one another?
Let me remind you of what we read in our NT reading this morning: 1 Jn 4:20: "Those who say, "I love God," and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen. 21The commandment we have from him is this: those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also." You may remember that I pointed out a few weeks ago that we experience the love of God through the love we receive from one another. And here we see that the opposite is also true. We express our love towards God through the love we show one another. If you want to claim to love God then you have to learn how to love God’s people. You can’t love God if you don’t love those who are made in his image, those for whom Christ died. Or to put it in the negative, if we fail to love one another then we’re also failing in our love of God. If we ignore our Christian brothers and sisters then we’re also ignoring God. And to extend that to the corporate context that means that if we ignore God’s church we’re equally ignoring God.
So ask yourself, how committed are you to God’s people, to God’s Church? Is God’s church your top priority? If you’re unable to meet with God’s people for a few weeks does it bother you? Or is our meeting together just one of a multitude of time commitments you have that can be shifted around to suit the circumstances of the week?
You know there are lots of people who claim to be committed to God but who in effect ignore God’s church. How do they ignore God’s Church? Well, some people do it by not belonging to one. They drift from place to place perhaps, never committing themselves to a particular group. Some just get out of the habit of going to church, preferring to sleep in or sit in a cafe drinking coffee with friends or reading the Sunday papers. But others are sort of committed to a church but only get there when it’s convenient or nothing more important is on. If you asked them they’d tell you that their church is really important to them. The trouble is, as I learnt a long time ago when I was studying management theory, one of the ways to tell what someone really believes is to see where they put their time, their priorities; to look at their actions and see how they match their words. No matter how strongly you assert that the Church is important to you, if you’re absent from it more often than you’re here your actions are denying your words (unless of course there’s some physical reason you can’t get here). And what we find here is that God sees the way we treat the church as representing the way we treat God.
By the way, this also says something to those people who love criticising the church. We all know there’s lots of things wrong with the church, but we mustn’t forget that this is God’s church so our criticism of the Church implies a criticism of God; it implies a lack of faith in God’s ability to achieve his purposes through this clearly fallen institution.
So make sure that your attitude to the Church truly reflects what you say your attitude is to God.
Finally, look at v17: "You have wearied the LORD with your words. Yet you say, "How have we wearied him?" By saying, "All who do evil are good in the sight of the LORD, and he delights in them." Or by asking, "Where is the God of justice?" You can imagine God sitting there thinking to himself "Why can’t they stop their whining. I’m sick and tired of it. Day after day after day! They never stop!"
And what are they whining about? Here we come back to this question of their economic prosperity. The nations around them are doing well and they’re not. Yet they’ve been faithfully worshipping God all these years. Why hasn’t God rewarded them? Where’s his sense of justice?
Now notice that their question doesn’t arise from some natural disaster where hundreds of ’innocent’ lives are lost. They haven’t just witnessed a car accident where the drunk driver survives and a family with young children are all killed. That isn’t the sort of justice they’re asking about. No, that would be an altogether different question. These people are worried about the fact that God doesn’t seem to have honoured his promise to bless them. These are your typical prosperity doctrine believers who are waiting to see the blessings poured out. Now as we’ll see next week God is willing to bless those who honour him, but if that’s our motivation then there’s a problem.
Can you see what the problem is? The problem is that their behaviour is being shaped for their own benefit, not for the glory of God. Now I’m quite sure that these aren’t the first people to try to strike a bargain with God. People do it all the time, don’t they? You may even have done it. Have you ever tried to bargain with God? "God, I’ll be as faithful as I can for the next two months if only you’ll let me pass my exam, if only you’ll let me get that promotion, if only you’ll take away whatever it is that’s worrying me this week." But what does that make God? Well he isn’t God to me any more, is he? He’s become my servant, a bit like a genie in a bottle who has to grant me three wishes, only these three wishes get renewed every time I renew my bargain with God. "Well, God I was good last month and you did what I asked so now I’ll be good next month and I want you to ..." No, that’s not the relationship we have with God is it? It’s no wonder he’s wearied with them. Why are we such slow learners? Why haven’t we worked out by now that the God we worship is so far above us - what was the expression - "high above the heavens?" - that all we can do is give him everything we have and trust him to know what’s best for us; trust him to do what’s right, no matter what?
In the end the question is the same. How committed are you to God? Where do your loyalties lie? Are you so committed to God that you’re willing to wait until he blesses you? Are you so committed to God that you’re seeking ways of serving his Church, serving his people? Are you so committed to God that your loyalty to him and his people stands above all other loyalties including your loyalty to yourself and your family? That’s the radical nature of Christian discipleship, isn’t it? We follow Jesus Christ who gave up all his other loyalties, all his personal rights, in order to obey God and serve God’s people.
For more sermons from this source go to http://home.vicnet.net.au/~sttheos
