There are all sorts of reasons not to preach this sermon! There area all kinds of problems kicked up because I have felt led to conclude our series of studies in the prophet Malachi with one of his most pointed and deliberate passages: his passage on marriage and divorce. Getting into this topic and dealing with this portion of the Bible presents some sticky spots for the preacher.
For one thing, there is the simple fact that many of you are not married … some never have been and never will be, and when I referred to that there were even some cheers going up last Sunday. Wow! And others have been married but are not now, and it may seem that what l am about to do is irrelevant to you. Actually, I do not think so, because the day may come when you will be looking at marriage; people in their 90's in nursing homes get married sometimes, it's never impossible. And it may also be that you can learn something about covenant relationships that will be of value to you anyway, so I am asking those who are not married to keep an open mind and heart and see whether God's word can address you this morning.
And then there are other problems the preacher faces on this business of marriage and divorce. I know that because many of you have been through failed marriages, to talk about this may cause some embarrassment, it may open up old wounds, it may stir up some unhealthy guilt in you. And all I can say to that is that I hope you know my heart and my spirit, and that I am going to try to speak with compassion rather than with condemnation. I am going to attempt to speak positively, optimistically. That's my personality, as I hope you know. And I know that brother Malachi is a bit on the negative side. Well, I hear him and you will hear him, but we will hope to be more positive than he and still deal with the same truths. Just hear the compassion our God, our Christ represents.
Please understand, then, that anything I may say or any story I may tell as an illustration is not drawn from my counseling and working with marriages in this congregation. I have no intention of holding up for ridicule or for cross-examination anyone in this church, and I am not interested in cruel accusations. Now the word of God when properly declared will always make all of us uncomfortable to one degree or another, but it will also be good news, news of forgiveness and hope, and so that is my aim today.
Finally, the preacher's worry about preaching on marriage and divorce is that he may stir up the dust that has settled over some marriage conflict, that somebody may go home and say to that wife or husband who didn’t come today, "Boy, have I got the goods on you! I heard the sermon you should have heard, you old pagan." Or some couple here today may get out to the car and find that you heard entirely different things even though you were sitting in the same pew, and what you thought was a calm and peaceful co-existence suddenly erupts into World War Three. I know that all of that is a risk. But as your pastor I have to be pledged to declare all of the counsel of God, I have to be committed to exploring all of the Scriptures and all of the issues with you, and so we'll have to take the risk together, won't we? We'll have to dip into these troubled waters together and trust that a loving God will not let us drown.
Just remember, too, that I speak not only as a preacher and an interpreter of the Bible, but I speak as a married man of almost 27 years, whose marriage is far from perfect, but in whose marriage there is that sense of rightness and permanence and commitment and Godwardness that seems to lie at the center of this passage of Scripture in Malachi 2.
By the way, it is a difficult passage at some points, and you will see in your Scripture booklet that the readings vary widely. The study book we used on Wednesday nights has another quite different reading. The New International Version seems to me as clear and as full of meaning as any, so I will read that one. Even with the wide variety in readings, the main thrust comes through them all: MALACHI 2: 13-16
So difficult to translate but not so difficult to understand, especially if you struggle a little to get to the meanings behind the words. Let me dare to paraphrase – not exactly translate but paraphrase. You follow again while I restate the Scripture:
"Your relationship to God is unhappy and you do not feel complete before him, and you ask, Why not? It is because God is, like it or not, a part of the relationship between you and your spouse, and you have been inattentive though he or she is your partner and your espoused by solemn covenant. Didn’t God put the two of you together, body and spirit? Why did He? Because He is looking for positive results, godly results. So be attentive, and do not cut off communication with one another. I hate divorce and I hate broken faith, says your God, and I hate to see you hurt either yourself or your marriage partner, says your God. So watch over your own heart and watch over your relationship; keep it fresh."
A marriage relationship, in fact any kind of covenant relationship, is always a triangle. Marriage is a triangle because it involves more than a man and a woman, two persons, together; it involves a third party, something else, outside the two. Covenant relationships, relationships in which two people agree to be together, always involve something else too – some purpose, some intention, some goal.
Two people agree to be business partners. They are not agreeing to be together just for the sake of being together. They are agreeing to do a third thing: to engage in business. It's a triangle, a three-sided relationship.
Two people agree to a relationship of teacher and student; they do not say, well, we will just get together every Tuesday morning at l0 a.m. at such and such a place and stare into one another’s eyes and find out what happens. No, they agree we will get together and you will teach me something, we will put our attention on something else, a third thing, outside the two of us. It's what we will work on together; the relationship is a triangle.
And so I am saying that marriage is a triangle. Marriage involves some purpose, some goal. Marriage is founded, despite all the pop song stuff … "I just wanta be with you, baby" … marriage is founded on the idea of some purpose, some goal, some intention, other than simply two people who have gotten lost in each other. Marriage is a triangle, just as any human covenant is.
The prophet Malachi, speaking for God, sensed this, and he used at least two words that suggest that marriage is a triangle. I’ve already used one of those words several times: covenant. "She is your wife by covenant," says Malachi, and the only reason he didn't round that off and say, "He is your husband by covenant" is that he was living and teaching in a male-dominated society. You can see that this goes both ways. You are husband and wife by covenant; there is a third something, a covenant, involved, you have agreed to something outside yourselves.
And then Malachi speaks of your companion, or in another translation, your partner. Your companion, your partner, you are together to engage in some enterprise. You are together to work toward some aim. Marriage is a companionship -- two persons together, but is it is a partnership, a walking together toward some goal? Marriage, you see, is a triangle.
And I have to suggest to you that if it is not, then that is where a lot of our problems begin. If we are not clear why we marry, if we do not have some sense of direction as we begin life in covenant, then we are setting ourselves up for problems. When young people get so absorbed in one another that all they can do is be obsessed with one another, that all they can do is spend endless hours wrapped up in a tiny world that has room in it for only one other person, then that relationship is sick because it is not a triangle, it has no purpose in it. Marriage relationships, male-female relationships, that have only two sides and no triangle side tend to be nothing more than sexual relationships, because the intimacy of sexuality is the only thing left to do if there is no direction, no purpose. Marriage is and has to be a triangle. A minister I know used to say to couples, "Don’t get married! Why do you want to get married?" just to test them and see if they had an answer, a purpose. Let Malachi remind you of the wife, the husband of companionship and of partnership; the wife, the husband, with whom you set out to do something, to conquer the world, to make a mark, whatever it was. But marriage was and is a triangle when it works.
All that having been said, you and I know that there are scores of ways to have such a triangle, such a three-sided relationship, and some of them are unhealthy. Some of these triangles are unhealthy and broken. People form the strangest alliances to accomplish the most unhealthy purposes some times, and they have purpose all right. They make marriage into a triangle all right, but it is a sick and violent triangle.
For example, there are marriages founded on competition as their purpose. There are marriages in which the real intent, though it would never be spoken, is for one partner to outshine the other. Remember that old song, "Anything you can do, I can do better"? And so husbands and wives compete; they compete for power, who's going to make the decisions? I heard about the couple who solved this one in a unique way: the husband said, well, my wife and I have it all worked out who makes what decision. She makes the little ones, like where we will live and how we will spend our money and where the kids will go to college. Those are just little decisions. I make the big ones, like what to do about the national debt and who’s going to win the Super Bowl!
Marriage for some is a broken and unhealthy triangle in which the third side is competition. For others it may be the children …we are together only for the sake of the kids; once they've moved out, we find we have no need for each other. For yet others it may be career and financial goals; the ultimate yuppie marriage, they say, is to be a DINK. Do you know who the DINKs are? Double income, no kids; and if that's all there is, I predict an unhealthy and sick triangle.
We could go on. When something becomes the purpose and intent of your marriage and begins to shape it in unhealthy ways, you have a marriage triangle, but you have a sick one, a poor one. And Malachi says, You have been faithless, you have set aside the wife, the husband of your covenant, and the Lord of hosts says, I hate divorce and I hate violence. I hate this sick relationship, says our God, I hate divorce and I hate violence.
Please hear me out on this. God says, I hate divorce, yes, but He does not say I hate divorced people. God says I hate divorce but He does not reject those who are the victims of brokenness. Listen again to what I am struggling to preach and teach: the real sin is choosing an unworthy goal for your marriage and thus breaking God's intent for your marriage. The real sin is choosing to go off in some direction which ignores your marriage partner or which ignores God's intent for healthy marriage.
Look, you don't have to get divorced in order to be divorced, do you? You don't have to go to court and get a judge to pronounce that your legal relationship is dissolved in order for it to be violently torn apart. Let one partner or, for that matter, both spouses, get involved in drug abuse, and it is not long before there is an emotional divorce if not a legal one, because the focus has turned to something sick. Let alcohol become the center of the life of one or both marriage partners and it is not long before a genuine love is dissolved, not by the Judge of the court but by Judge Barleycorn. Start thinking with your hormones instead of your brain and your heart and before long there is distance, there is violence, and there is divorce emotionally, whether or not there is divorce by decree.
Are you hearing me? Are you hearing Malachi? I hate it when there is broken faith, says our God. I hate it when you seek to put down one another, I hate it when you choose an unworthy motive for marriage, says our Lord. I hate it when you do violence, physical or emotional, to yourself and to one another, says our God. Marriage can become, sad to say, a broken and unhealthy triangle, when its intent is unworthy.
You know, the Bible has a very powerful word to describe what I've been talking about. The Bible is amazingly pointed in its labeling of this broken triangle. The Bible calls it idolatry … idolatry … placing anything in the place of God is idolatry. Giving anything the place in your life that God ought to have is idolatry. And so the broken triangles I've been talking about are at heart sick because they are idolatrous, they do not rest on God.
What this prophet wants us to see is that marriage can be and must be and should be a triangle, a triangle which has God as it; base, God as its purpose, the will of God as its intent. If you could have marriage as it is meant to be, then marriage must be a triangle, with goal and direction; and any other goal and direction other than God's will is an idolatrous and violent and divorcing direction. Marriage as it was really meant to be has God as it s solid base. Marriage is a triangle in which our God is in the partnership, and He has a plan for us as families.
Says this prophet, Malachi, in what I have said is an awkward verse to translate, and yet I hope its meaning comes through: "Has not the Lord made them one, body and spirit? Why did He do so? Because He was seeking godly offspring." Or, you might read it, "because He was seeking spiritual results." God brings us together in marriage so that we may together, with Him, create either children or works of love or ministries of compassion; so that we may together with Him accomplish something of value, something Christlike, for His world. We are when we marry not two little islands swimming around in the great ocean, bumping into one another to hook up and stay little islands; we are instead instruments through whom a loving God can work to achieve His purpose of harmony and reconciliation in the world.
Time does not in any way permit me to flesh out this in the way we ought to. Can I just leave it this way? Marriage is a triangle, it just is; and it can be sick and broken, with one or both of us floundering around with unhealthy motives; or it can be solidly founded upon God and His will. Marriage is a triangle in which God can be involved.
Our God does not want us to divorce; that is not to say that He is a legalist insisting that we stay in a setting where we are going to become victims of abuse and putdown and destruction. But he is saying, do not willfully and selfishly break the triangle, do not put aside your spouse, do not put aside your God. Couples, don't divorce God!
And our God does want us to become partners with Him in the work of Kingdom building; we need as husbands and wives to pray together, minister together, discern God's will together we need to keep the triangle intact and solidly based.
About 13 or 14 years ago my wife and I had a significant change in our marriage. I had worked in ministry for a number of years and she had kept the home and raised our children. I would not at that time have said so either in private or in public, but I now see that I was divorcing her. No, no, never got a lawyer, never went to court, never even spoke the word divorce. We are well committed beyond that. But I was nevertheless divorcing her by doing my thing over here in a corner and keeping her out of it. And she didn’t understand it, didn’t like it, and said to me, "You work on that ministry stuff all day, you bring it home at night, you go to your desk, and you are missing the growth of your children. You are distancing from me."
And so I began to look at that … hard, hard. And at about the same time some things happened in the campus ministry program of our Convention such that she was offered a chance to get vitally involved in the same work, in campus ministry. And from that point, slowly, not without some pain here and there, but slowly and surely, because we share a common intent, and because this dimwit at least some of the time remembers that he could easily lose the best thing that ever happened to him, we are improving our marriage. Because, you see, when it functions and functions as it should, marriage is a triangle, and not just any triangle, but a triangle with God at its base.
The wise person builds his house upon a rock, and when rain and storm come, that house will prevail.
