How to kick-start your faith Part 2
Remain Loyal (2:10-17).
INTRODUCTION
Malachi 2:10-16
With good reason there was one particular woman who was always suspicious of her husband’s waywardness. Each night there would be a row when she would discover a blonde or a brunette hair on his lapel. One night she was really puzzled and she studied his coat for ten minutes without finding one hair. Finally she asked him, “Okay, so who’s this bald headed woman you’re seeing?”
Loyalty is essential if a marriage is going to last isn’t it? In fact it is essential in any lasting relationship. You may remember that we are looking at how we can kick-start our faith. Well in today’s passage Malachi makes the point that every person can experience a vital relationship with God if they remain loyal (OHP).
A relationship that is both pleasing to God and fulfilling for us must be characterised by loyalty. Not that being loyal to God is a new idea. It should be obvious that to experience a vital relationship with anyone, let alone God, we ought remain loyal to them.
The primary purpose of Malachi’s statement here, is to point out that every person can experience a vital relationship with God if they put that loyalty into practice not only in their relationship to him, but also in their relationships with God’s people and their own families.
I. REMAIN LOYAL TO EACH OTHER (2:10)
In fact loyalty to God is not even the first issue raised. In 2:10, Malachi’s first point is that of loyalty within the family of believers (OHP). I suppose that if we cannot be loyal to one another, how can we be loyal to God?
He reminds us that as members of one family, God’s people have only one Father. That God’s people are the children and creation of God alone. With this in mind he goes on to say that - If God’s people have only one Father, then they must be brothers and sisters - and his question is “why then, if they are family, do God’s people experience disloyalty among them?”
His concern is based upon the fact that when disloyalty arises, then that special relationship between God and his people is broken. And that’s what we’re on about today. What keeps our faith vital and alive is a heartfelt relationship with God. When we are disloyal to one another, this displeases God. So disloyalty among the family of believers breaks relationship to God.
The application doesn’t end their either. God is not only the Father of all believers, he is the creator and Father of all humankind. Therefore our loyalty clearly extends into the wider community also. As God’s created children we must be loyal to one another, but especially so if we are part of his new creation, part of his special family of believers. We must set the example.
Let me try and ground this concept in a real life. The church is as much a human organization as it is a divine one. It’s made up of fallible humans who get under one another’s skin from time to time. When we want to moan about someone else - just don’t. It’s so easy to whinge to anybody who will listen - apart from the person concerned. The hard task is to approach the other party concerned and deal with the situation at its source. There are clear biblical outlines as to how we are to deal with this kind of conflict.
A friend recently put me straight in a manner which was commendable. I had left a task undone just prior to going on holidays. So I asked my friend if she could see to it. Instead of carrying her gripe to someone else she came straight back at me there and then and said, “Well I did mention this to you a week ago.” It hurt but she was right. I had had plenty of time to see that this task was done. And I was glad that she was loyal enough to bring me to task over the issue and not belly-ache to someone else.
If we want to experience a vital relationship with our God then we need to be at peace with one another first. Nothing can distract us from our relationship with God quicker than bitterness and disloyalty, especially among the family of believers. We need to remain loyal to one another.
II. REMAIN LOYAL TO GOD (2:11-12)
You would think that it would go without saying that we should also remain loyal to God if we want to experience intimacy with him. Yet it would seem that this concept was not that obvious to Malachi’s audience. He describes the Israelite’s behaviour in v11 as “detestable” because “the sanctuary (or holiness), that the Lord loves has been desecrated by [their] marrying the daughter’s of foreign gods.” This was another way of saying that they were consistently giving God the short shift. Other issues took precedence. The situation was probably such that Jewish men were marrying non-Jewish women and so inviting their non-Jewish practices into their homes. Malachi points out that God wants his people to marry within the faith - and that to do otherwise often led to people deserting God.
But it wasn’t only the marriage laws which were being flouted. It would seem that God’s people were walking contrary to his will in a lot of other ways too. The Jewish word for ‘treachery’ appears in v11 and suggests that God’s people were deserting him and placing all kinds of things before him in importance. This kind of behaviour was especially heartbreaking to God considering the exceptional gift they had received from him. God had placed his trust in the Jewish people to represent him to the world. They held a special place in his heart. Yet they were guilty of treason.
Treachery still breaks God’s heart - and we can’t go on breaking God’s heart and expect to have a living and vital relationship with him. Perhaps like the Israelites of old we may also need to remember the words of King David found in the Psalms,
PS 78:56 But they put God to the test
and rebelled against the Most High;
they did not keep his statutes.
PS 78:57 Like their fathers they were disloyal and faithless,
as unreliable as a faulty bow.
PS 78:58 They angered him with their high places;
they aroused his jealousy with their idols.
It is difficult to carry on a relationship with God if we anger him and arouse his jealousy by continually resisting him and his voice.
I wonder what would happen if we applied the same standards of loyalty to our Christian activities that we expect from other areas of our lives?
If your car starts once every three tries, is it reliable? If the postman skipped delivery every Monday and Thursday, is he trustworthy? If you don’t go to work once or twice a month, are you a reliable employee? If your fridge stops working for a day or two every now and then, do you say, “Oh well, it work most of the time.”? If your water heater provides an icy cold shower every now and then, is it dependable? If you skipped a couple of electricity bill payments do you think Western Power would mind? If you fail to worship God one or two Sundays a month, would you expect to be called a faithful Christian?
We expect loyalty and reliability from things and other people - isn’t it reasonable then that God just might expect the same from us. Being a Christian is not about voluntary work. God has purchased our loyalty and our service with the blood of his only Son. So if we want to kick-start our faith we need to remain loyal to God?
III. REMAIN LOYAL TO OUR FAMILIES (2:13-16)
Perhaps the best forum for this loyalty to express itself initially is in the home - it’s certainly the toughest place to express it. One thing God wants for all people is happy homes, that’s why his messenger Malachi gets tough on the marriage relationship in the next few verses.
He brings clarity to the problem that God’s people were experiencing. Their faith was dead because God no longer paid attention to them. They wept and wailed at the altar, they flooded the altar with their tears. But God no longer paid attention to them because their sorrow was caused by the wrong motives. They were in mourning because their experience of faith was inadequate. They should have been in mourning because they had sinned by rejecting of God’s ideal for them in marriage. God was not listening to them because they were morally corrupt. Old men were running off with young women and divorcing the wives of their youth for no other reason than this.
The point is this. If we want to kick-start our relationship with God, we must first kick immorality out of our lives. We must be loyal to our families. In Malachi’s day the specific problem seemed to be a general lack of seriousness when entering the marriage covenant. Marriage was being entered into too lightly and ending with too little contemplation. Such a depreciation of the marriage covenant was immoral in the eyes of God simply because too many people were getting hurt.
However, although easy divorce was the specific problem of God’s people then, any immorality in life has the potential to separate us from an intimate relationship with God. The biblical definition of immorality is the blatant violation of God’s created order. And fidelity in marriage is God’s desire for that special union. We’re told that, “God hates divorce.” Notice that it doesn’t say that God won’t allow it or that God hates the divorcee. Clearly God hates divorce because it is not in our best interests. It is God’s desire for us to take marriage seriously.
Here’s a story about a man who took the issue of loyalty in marriage very seriously. Years ago in the north of England a poor man’s wife, soon after their marriage, drifted morally, and went rapidly from bad to worse. Often he would come home to find that she had unearthed new and various ways to disgrace herself. One night he sat down in his unhappy home to decide what to do. The worst had happened too often to leave him much hope of improving the situation. Nevertheless, he chose to stand by her and to keep a home for her because she wouldn’t keep one for him. His situation really put skin onto the words “for better or for worse.” That night he reaffirmed his marriage vow.
When friends would tell him to leave her, he would answer, “Don’t say a word, she’s my wife! I loved her when she was a little girl in our village and I will love her as long as there is breath in my body.” She never changed, and died in his house after years of shame, with her husband by her side stooped in prayer.
Divorce is a serious issue because breaking our loyalty to one another is not simply a social issue, it’s also a spiritual issue. Like the man in the story, we need to realise that disloyalty in the family not only breaks relationship horizontally with our spouse but also vertically with our God. That is why Malachi concludes this section by warning God’s people to “guard yourselves in your spirit and do not break faith.”
Let’s see if we can shed some more light on this instruction - to “guard ourselves in our spirit.” Notice in v15, that God owns us - “in flesh and in spirit we are his.” In other words God sustains our flesh, ie. our physical existence; and gives us that life producing spirit. Spirit here does not mean his Holy Spirit, but that spirit which supports human life. The same word is used in the Genesis account of the creation of man. God breathed into his nostrils the breath (or spirit) of life. It’s the spirit without which we would die - it gives life to our bones (Gen 6:3). It’s also the spirit which exists beyond the grave and is judged by God (pr 16:2), and that is created anew when God’s Holy Sprit comes into our lives (Ps 104:29-30). So when Malachi says “guard yourself in your spirit,” he’s talking about human physical life and human spiritual life.
Bear with me on this because it’s an important point. A marriage is a gift given by God in order that we may minister his love to each other in practical ways. To help each other, coach and encourage one another, to nurture, to love each other unconditionally, to be God’s eyes, God’s hands, God’s feet for each other - to borrow the words of a popular song. God makes a married couple one so that they may have the responsibility of ministering to the spirit, ie. the physical and spiritual life, of their spouse. To put it as plain as I can, husbands and wives, you are God’s representative to your spouse. God wants to show his love for your spouse through you and that’s a mighty responsibility. Just imagine then, the trauma that arises when this relationship is shattered by disloyalty.
Not only has the faith and trust of your spouse been broken, but so too has the faith and trust God places in us to care for this person. In addition to that, disloyalty in marriage amounts to a rejection of that special person God has given to minister to your own unique needs. It is a rejection of God’s goodness to you. And clearly we can’t expect to have a vibrant relationship with God if we continue to reject his offers of support and assistance. If we want to kick-start our relationship with God we must endeavour to remain loyal to our God given families.
CONCLUSION
There’s a saying that suspicion and doubt enter by the door through which love and loyalty exit. A relationship that is both pleasing to God and fulfilling for us cannot be based on suspicion and doubt. This is the life of the unbeliever not the believer. No, the word of the Lord to us today is that everyone can experience a vital relationship with him if they put loyalty into practice. If we want to kick-start our faith we must be loyal in our relationship with God’s family, with God himself and in relationship to our own families.
