“A Clear Call to Faithfulness”
Malachi 2:10-16
In our passage today Malachi turns to dealing with the subject of the people’s indifference to the Lord’s will. They are visibly blaming their problems on God rather than seeing them as a result of their own unfaithfulness. The people are being unfaithful to one another, especially to their wives, who were being abandoned in favor of younger pagan women. The people are displaying a lack of loyalty in their relationships with others, their marriages and ultimately their relationship with God. It is so amazing to stop and think about just how easily we lose focus in our relationships. A simple fact we need to remember is that in order for us to have a growing relationship with God we need to get the relationships with others right first. Just like a successful relationship with God our interpersonal relationships must be based on complete faithfulness. Malachi leaves no doubt of the damage unfaithfulness can do in any relationship. The bottom line is that for a relationship to be meaningful to us and pleasing to God it must be characterized by faithfulness. Malachi issues a stern command for the people to stop this treachery. The people needed to turn from their sin and begin working to restore the broken relationships. Malachi’s obvious task is to call the people’s attention to their sins and to give them a clear call to return to faithfulness.
I. Malachi begins this part of his message by reminding the people that they are a distinctive people called by God.
A. The Israelites have begun to abandon the basic principles that made them unique has a nation.
1. God was the father of Israel. He had created this special nation at Mt. Sinai.
2. The rhetorical question “Is there not one father to all of us?” does not teach the doctrine of the universal fatherhood of God. Rather here the text is stressing the uniqueness of Israel as a nation.
3. The rhetorical question “Did not one God create us?” does not refer to the original creation, but to the creative act by which God chose Israel as his own people.
4. Intermarriage defiled “the covenant of our fathers.” The practice was a menace to the distinctive faith which was the basis of God’s covenant with Israel as well as their national existence.
5. In the midst of the covenant nation Israel, of which the postexilic community was the representative, an “abomination” had been committed. The term is used to describe pagan idolatry and immorality.
B. God has chosen the church to be a distinctive people and many times we are guilty of abandoning the basic principles that make us unique as a people.
1. But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. (1 Peter 2:9-10—NIV)
2. What makes the church unique is not the traditions that we hold, it is our mission and the message that we share.
3. When we elevate methodology, when we exhibit characteristics of the world in our interpersonal relationships we begin to lose the very things that helps make us unique.
4. What the church perceives as their mission will always define who we are and why we exist.
5. When the church becomes unfaithful to the message and ceases to carry out their God given mission the church ceases to be the church.
II. Malachi quickly points out that their sin and unfaithfulness is destroying the very relationships that God considers important.
A. The people were consistently showing a lack of faithfulness in their dealings with others within their community.
1. 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?”
2. All betrayals, from the slightest unkindness to the grossest injustice, merit God’s disapproval.
3. When we are disloyal to one another, this displeases God. So disloyalty among the family of believers breaks our relationship to God.
4. The church is made up of people, who have the tendency to disagree and not get along.
5. When this is taken into consideration we will quickly discover the importance of faithfulness in our relationships with one another.
6. Nothing can take the focus away from our relationship with God faster than bitterness and unfaithfulness, especially among the family of believers. We need to remain loyal to one another.
B. The people were showing no regard to the covenant of marriage that was established by God.
1. The men of Israel were guilty of the sin of intermarriage with unbelievers. “Judah…has married the daughter of a strange god,” a woman who adhered to a foreign deity.
2. Such marriages had always been condemned because of the danger of seduction into idolatry.
3. Not to distinguish between Israelite women and heathen women—or between Christian spouses and unbelievers—is to deny the difference between the God of the Bible and the pagan deities.
4. Marriage was instituted by God and governed by his law. In Malachi’s day the people had forgotten the fundamental purpose of marriage.
5. They also were disobeying the divine principles which governed that institution. Malachi charged them with unlawful divorces as well as unlawful marriages.
6. Apparently the Israelites not only were marrying foreign women but were also divorcing their Israelite wives in the process.
7. The reason that Malachi is hitting the issue of marriage so hard is because God wants His people to enjoy fulfilling family lives.
8. When you gain an understanding of the biblical definition of immorality you discover that it is a blatant violation of God’s created order. And fidelity in marriage is God’s desire for that special union.
9. Malachi reminds us that, “God hates divorce.” This does not say that God will not allow it or that God hates the person who has experienced a divorce.
10. The point God is making is that divorce is never in our best interest, and His desire is for us to take marriage very seriously.
C. The unfaithfulness in their interpersonal relationships ultimately led to unfaithfulness to God.
1. If anyone says, “I love God,” yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen. (1 John 4:20—NIV)
2. Matthew Henry writes, “It cannot be expected that he who is false to his God should be true to his friend.”
3. The way we deal with other people reflects the depth of our relationship with God.
4. If we want to enjoy the blessings of a growing relationship with God then we need to make sure that we have our relationships with each other straight.
III. To enjoy God’s continued blessings we need to answer God’s clear call to faithfulness.
A. Israel expressed sorrow over their circumstances, but this sorrow was misplaced because it failed to recognize the people’s sin.
1. Apparently the people made a great display of grief over their spiritual barrenness.
2. The people’s sorrow, however, was for the wrong reason; they should have been bemoaning their sins rather than their lack of divine acceptance and the absence of the consequent blessings.
3. The way of sin is down-hill, and one violation of the covenant is an inlet to another.
4. The people’s unfaithfulness has created a barrier between them and God resulting in the lack of divine acceptance.
B. When we accept the clear call to faithfulness it involves taking responsibility for our sins and striving to restore the relationships that have been broken as a result.
1. Israel failed to see the need for repentance because they were blaming everyone for their predicament but the ones that were truly responsible, themselves.
2. The unfaithfulness of Israel was destroying their national solidarity; likewise unfaithfulness on our part destroys the unity within the family of believers.
3. God expects faithfulness to characterize the way we deal with others and ultimately Him.
4. There is to be no barriers in the Lord’s church, and as long as we strive to look out for our own interests we will always miss out on the blessings that God has intended for us.
5. So the question I would like to leave you with is, “Does God see faithfulness characterizing all the relationships in your life?”
6. If the answer is no then you need to answer this clear call to faithfulness.
After breaking up with his fiancée, a young man realized the error of his ways when he wrote: “Dearest Marie, No words could ever express the great unhappiness I’ve felt since breaking our engagement. Please say you’ll take me back. No one could ever take your place in my heart, so please forgive me. I love you! Yours forever, Jimmy…P.S. And congratulations on winning the lottery.” This kind of makes you wonder about this guy’s underlying motives. The truth is that our underlying motives have much to do with the success and failures of our relationships.
