Do Not Be Faithless

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January 7, 2024 | Malachi 2:10-16 | Expository sermon from Sam Kelm.

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This sermon is from Grace Fellowship Church in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. To access other sermons or to learn more about us, please visit our website at graceedmonton .ca.
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As Shane mentioned, if you would turn to Malachi chapter 2, we'll be looking at verses 10 through 16 today.
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And before we start, after a week break from Malachi, and some of us were gone over Christmas, I want to just quickly do a quick fly through what we've looked at so far.
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You remember Malachi takes place in the middle of the 5th century BC, around 450 to 433
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BC, and about 100 years after the Babylonian exile ended.
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The Persian king Cyrus had defeated the Babylonians in battle and allowed the Jews to return to Judah.
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And so over the next 100 years, we see the Israelites return to the land in three waves, and the temple had been rebuilt, the walls of Jerusalem had been once again erected, thanks to Nehemiah.
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And yet we quickly find that it didn't take long for the people to once again be unfaithful to their
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God. And so it looks like we had a great start, the wall and the temple being rebuilt, and we find
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Ezra, Nehemiah, and Malachi, who were all contemporaries at that time, ministering to the people and addressing the many gross sins that Israel once again had fallen into.
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And so within the book of Malachi so far, we've begun in chapter 1, verse 1, as we always do.
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And you remember Shane talking about the love that God had for his people.
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Chapter 1 and verse 2, you remember how God had said, I have loved you, and how that love had begun in the past, but was a continuous love that had continued to that day and continues to this day.
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And Shane spoke about the unfailing love that God had shown to his undeserving people, which includes even us if we are found in Christ.
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And then the week after, the second half of chapter 1, we saw how the priests had despised the name of God and their sacrifices, how they were offering the worst of the animals that they had instead of the best, how they bring in the blind and the lame and the sick, and how it would have been better for them not to offer sacrifices at all than to offer them in vain, when they were simply going through the motions of their worship, but when their heart was far from God.
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A couple weeks ago, we heard about the curse that the priests incurred on themselves because they failed in their priestly duties of instructing the people, turning them away from iniquity, and instead had caused the people to stumble.
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And that the ultimate fulfillment of the priesthood is our great high priest, Jesus Christ. With all that in mind, with Israel's unfaithfulness to their
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God, we now come to Malachi 2, verses 10 through 16. And what we'll see is that unfaithfulness towards God also means unfaithfulness toward each other.
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The two are very closely related. And so we see that the priests and the people, once again, being unfaithful not only to the
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Lord, but to each other in the way that they treat the marriage covenant. And Malachi has a timely message for us in a world where biblical concepts of marriage and family are under great threat and are treated with no regards or much contempt.
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Many simply marry for the sake of convenience or so -called financial benefit.
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Children are seen more as a burden than anything else, and the destruction of the
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Christian idea of family seems to be high up on the agenda of the world today and will do anything in its power to try to demolish it.
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Though the church is not relayed to marriage in the same way, I'm afraid we have not been completely unaffected by the constant assault on this
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God -given institution. A great amount of people attending church regularly are oftentimes unaware of the great blessings that a faithful,
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God -honoring marriage brings, how it affects their worship, their children, their children's children and generations to come, how marriage is one of the greatest daily reminders of the gospel of our
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Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Too many of us enter relationships with unbelievers without even thinking about it.
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Where the Puritans saw the family as a small church that was to engage in daily family worship, we don't concern ourselves much anymore with raising up of godly children.
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We're content to pass that on to the Sunday school teacher or the youth pastor who may not even be qualified to be one.
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Oftentimes Christ in the marriage is standing on the sidelines, watching from the outside rather than being the central, the focal point and the driving force of a faithful, lifelong marriage.
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And so as we work our way through this passage today, we'll see that Malachi is addressing each one of these points.
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And we will see him laying out much of a foundation of marriage that the New Testament continues to build on.
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So what we're going to do is first, you'll see in your outline, we'll consider what constitutes a
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God -honoring marriage. And then once we looked at that, we will continue looking at three great blessings of a faithful biblical marriage.
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So in points two through four, we'll see how marriage enhances one's worship, how it blesses us with godly children, and lastly, the blessing of the daily reminder, as already mentioned, of Christ and the imitation of Christ -like love.
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Now we're going to be talking a lot about marriage and couples today. I know we have a lot of singles here.
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My prayer is, I'm included, my prayer is that as we study this, that we would get a well -rounded picture of marriage, that within the body of this church, that we would be able to hold our brothers and sisters accountable to the biblical picture of marriage, and that lastly, we will pursue marriage with great intent for the glory and honor of God.
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With that, let's go to the Lord in prayer before we get into the text. Oh, Heavenly Father, we thank you so much for your word.
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It is so good to meet and to open up your word and to see and to hear and to understand what you have told us, what you have said.
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And it would be foolish of us to come to your word now without asking for your help. And so we come and we ask and we beg that you would help, that you would help us to understand your word, that you would help me to make your word clear, and that as a result, that you would be exalted in our hearts, that Christ would be made much of, that you would conform those of us who are married more and more to the image of their
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Savior as they imitate Christ and his love to the church and their marriages. Oh, we ask, help us now as we dig into your word.
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In Christ's name, amen. All right, let's read the text. As I already mentioned,
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Malachi 2, verses 10 through 16. Malachi writes,
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Have we not all one Father? Has not one God created us? Why, then, are we faithless to one another, profaning the covenant of our fathers?
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Judah has been faithless, and abomination has been committed in Israel and in Jerusalem.
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For Judah has profaned the sanctuary of the Lord, which he loves, and has married the daughter of a foreign
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God. May the Lord cut off from the tents of Jacob any descendant of the man who does this, who brings an offering to the
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Lord of hosts. And the second thing you do, you cover the Lord's altar with tears, with weeping and groaning, because he no longer regards the offering or accepts it with favor from your hand.
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But you say, why does he not? Because the Lord was witness between you and the wife of your youth, to whom you have been faithless.
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Though she is your companion and your wife by covenant. Did he not make them one with a portion of the
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Spirit in their union? And what was the one God seeking? Godly offspring.
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So guard yourselves in your spirit and let none of you be faithless to the wife of your youth. For the man who does not love his wife but divorces her, says the
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Lord, the God of Israel, covers his garment with violence, says the Lord of hosts.
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So guard yourselves in your spirit and do not be faithless. We'll jump right into our first point.
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A faithful, God -honoring and glorifying foundation. We'll see this in verses 10 and 12.
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And what's happening is, you remember Shane, as he opened us in this series, talking about the structure of Malachi, how it's put together, where Malachi has several different disputations with the people and the priests.
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And we come to the third one now here, and Malachi brings a heavy charge against the people.
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Malachi says, essentially he says this to the people, if God, who had loved them, you remember chapter 1, verse 2, and is continually loving them, if that God is their father, their creator and their master, if that God is the foundation of who and what
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Israel is, then why in the world are they being faithless to one another and in so doing are profaning the covenant of their fathers at Mount Sinai?
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Now it's not written in the text, but we can almost hear the people respond the same way they had responded earlier in the chapter where they respond to Malachi with another question.
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Malachi, how have we been faithless? Tell us, how have we profaned the covenant of our fathers?
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And it's almost as if Malachi already anticipates that question, and if you look at verse 11, he continues and he essentially tells them that all of Judah, the whole nation of Israel, everyone from the priests down to the common people was guilty of this sin.
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He says essentially you are all guilty of this. All of you have profaned the sanctuary of the Lord and have married the daughter of a foreign
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God. But this is a universal charge against the people. Now the question is, what does
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Malachi mean when he says the sanctuary of the Lord, which he loves, and when he speaks about marrying the daughter of a foreign
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God? The sanctuary of the Lord in our immediate context, the context is important.
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If you look again at verse 10, where he says, have we not one father? Has not one
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God created us? Our context in which
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Malachi uses this means that he's referring to the people of Israel themselves. They are the sanctuary of the
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Lord. And then we consider the Lord's words when he says which he loves.
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Again, God had established that foundation right at the beginning of the book when he said
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I have loved you, and I continue to love you. Additionally, the word, the
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Hebrew word used here for sanctuary, it means, it refers to a sacred thing or a place.
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And in a more abstract sense, it means dedicated or consecrated or a holy thing unto the
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Lord. And the root word, it's interesting, from which that word comes, means to cause something to be consecrated or holy.
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Now there is one place that I found in the Old Testament, in the Pentateuch, where Israel is declared as holy, where they are being told that they are loved by God in the context of intermarriage with pagans.
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If you would turn with me to Deuteronomy 7, and we'll, it's so good, we'll just read, we'll just read a good chunk of it just for the flow of the text.
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Deuteronomy 7, and we'll look at verses 1 through 11.
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And pay attention to verses 3 and 4 and then verses 6 and 8. Deuteronomy 7, 1 through 11.
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When the Lord your God brings you into the land that you're entering to take possession of it and clears away many nations before you, the
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Hittites, the Girgashites, the Amorites, the Canines, the Perizzites, the
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Hivites, and the Jebusites, seven nations more numerous and mightier than you.
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And when the Lord your God gives them over to you and you defeat them, then you must devote them to complete destruction.
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You shall make no covenant with them and show no mercy to them. You shall not intermarry with them, giving your daughters to their sons or taking their daughters for your sons.
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For they would turn away your sons from following me to serve other gods. Then the anger of the
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Lord would be kindled against you and he would destroy you quickly. But thus you shall deal with them.
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You shall break down their altars and dash in pieces their pillars and chop down their ashram and burn their carved images with fire.
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Now notice verse 6 through 8 here. For you are a people holy to the
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Lord your God. The Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession.
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Out of all the people who are on the face of the earth. It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the
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Lord set his love on you and chose you. For you were the fewest of all peoples.
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But it is because the Lord loves you and is keeping the oath that he swore to your fathers that the
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Lord has brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh, king of Egypt.
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Know therefore that the Lord your God is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments to a thousand generations and repays to their face those who hate him by destroying them.
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He will not be slack with no one who hates him. He will repay him to his face. You shall therefore be careful to do the commandment and the statutes and the rules that I command you today.
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The people of Israel, the nation of Israel was to be God's treasured possession.
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They were to be a set apart and a holy people. And by marrying the daughter of a foreign
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God, when we put those two things together, marrying the daughter of a foreign
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God, referring to idolaters, anybody that worships any God other than the true God of Israel, we see that by entering into marriage with pagans, that Israel had disobeyed the command of Moses and that it also heavily stained their being set apart as a holy nation, a chosen people unto
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God. It showed that they had not given their hearts to the Lord but to man and perhaps, in this case, even idols.
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And in verse 12 we see, if we return to Malachi 2, that this was a great abomination.
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God detested it so much, in fact, that in verse 12 he says he will cut off, he will destroy the lineage, the family line of anyone who had committed this.
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Malachi is telling the people that God cares deeply about the marriages of his people.
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Now what do we do with that? I suggest that the same principle that Malachi lays out here remains true for us under the
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New Covenant and that we find it laid out in the New Testament. If we think of 1
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Peter 2, 9 and 10, you don't have to turn there, but Peter writes, but you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.
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Once you were not a people but now you are God's people. Once you had not received mercy but now you have received mercy.
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Anyone who does not believe in Christ is outside of that realm that Peter talks about.
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And all of us should be familiar with this section in Paul's second letter to the Corinthians where he draws a clear distinction between the righteous and the unrighteous, between the believers and unbelievers.
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If you would turn with me to 2 Corinthians 6, I know we're looking at a lot of scripture today, but I don't think we can read too much scripture in our service.
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We'll look at 2 Corinthians 6 and we'll read verses 14 through 7, verse 1.
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Paul writes, Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. For what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness?
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Or what fellowship has light with darkness? What accord has
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Christ with Belial? Or what portion does a believer share with an unbeliever?
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What agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living
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God. As God said, I will make my dwelling among them and walk among them.
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I will be their God and they shall be my people. Therefore, go out from their midst and be separate from them, says the
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Lord, and touch no unclean thing. Then I will welcome you and I will be a father to you and you shall be sons and daughters to me, says the
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Lord God Almighty. Since we have these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from every defilement of body and spirit, bringing holiness to completion in the fear of God.
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So the same principle that Malachi lays out remains for us today. God wants his people, even under the new covenant, to be separate from unbelievers in the most intimate relationships known to man.
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That is marriage. If you are desiring marriage, if you're actively pursuing marriage, if you are in a relationship where you're already engaged, listen to the words of Malachi and get the foundation right.
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Do not even entertain the thought of entering whatever form of romantic relationship with an unbeliever.
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It greatly displeases the Lord. It grieves his heart. Make sure that you're convinced that the other person is a faithful believer.
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Get brothers and sisters around you. Help them. Let them help you examine the other person.
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But do not, do not trust your own heart. It's often been said that the human heart is an idol factory.
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And if you've come to the point where you idolize marriage and you idolize this person that you're interested in, you will not think clearly, and most importantly, biblically.
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You will not think biblically. And so please do not put your soul on the line for a relationship that will only last for but a moment in light of eternity.
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We only have warnings regarding entering into marriage with those outside the faith.
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And I do not know of one scriptural example where disobedience to that command ended well.
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I think King Solomon, we all know about Solomon. He's the prime example of someone whose heart was being drawn away from God to a marriage built on the wrong foundation.
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Know that God loves you and has made you holy unto him through Christ. And he desires to have all your hearts.
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So don't profane yourself. Do not be faithless by giving it to the world, by entering into a marriage covenant with an unbeliever.
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They have absolutely nothing to give you, zero. They don't seek your good. God and God alone seeks your good, and he's given his son, and he continues to give you in abundance, and you get to enjoy him internally when he calls you home.
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So my charge is do not be faithless in choosing a spouse. That is the foundation that Malachi lays out.
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And with that foundation laid in regards to who we are to marry, let's look at some of the blessings that come from a good, godly, faithful marriage.
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This brings us to our second point. Faithfulness in marriage promotes unhindered worship.
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That's verses 13 and 14. And what we'll see in these two verses is how faithlessness in the marriage leads to a hindering of God -pleasing worship.
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Look at verse 13. And the second thing you do, you cover the Lord's altar with tears, with weeping and groaning because he no longer regards the offering or accepts it with favor from your hand.
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It's interesting. Somehow, the Israelites, in all their despising of God and all their going through the motions, somehow by God's, perhaps by God's grace, they were aware that their worship was no longer being accepted by him.
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One commentary that I looked up says that the Hebrew expression in verse 13 there that's translated regards means to turn oneself with pleasure towards something.
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Meaning that because of the faithlessness in their marriages, God was no longer with pleasure looking upon and accepting the offerings of the people.
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And that should be a terrifying thought to all of us, I think. If we think about the fact that we can, either individually in the privacy of our homes or when we come together corporately, that we can come here, that we can read the
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Word, that we can pray the Word, that we can preach and we can sing the Word, we can partake of the Lord's Supper week after week and after week and that potentially
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God is not pleased if our marriages are in shambles. If God is not pleased to receive our worship, then
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I think it's best, like Shane said a few weeks ago, preaching on the polluted offerings of the priest that we shut the doors.
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That we might as well not meet at all and we'll just go somewhere else. It's a terrifying thought to me.
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Malachi continues what's seen in verse 14, giving us the why.
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God no longer regarded the worship of his people. I've already hinted at it. He says,
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But you say, why does he not? Because the Lord was witness between you and the wife of your youth to whom you have been faithless.
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Though she is your companion and your wife by covenant. I looked at a lot of commentaries on this passage.
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It was quite something. Scholars end up on different sides in this verse as to why exactly
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God no longer regarded the offerings of the people. Some argue that it refers to the divorces mentioned in verse 16.
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Others suggest it refers to the men entering perhaps into polygamous marriages by marrying foreign daughters in addition to their
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Israelite wives, the wives of their youth, as the text says. And no longer giving their first wife the place of honor that she was to have.
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I don't think there's a need for us to enter this discussion here and now today, but whether Malachi has divorce or polygamy in mind,
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I believe the underlying hard issue remains the same in either case. The people fail to honor and love the wives that they first enter into marriage covenant with and did not regard them any longer or no longer delighted in them.
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Academics that study ancient Israel said that marriages at the time were mostly a civil affair more than anything else.
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There was no real religious confirmation to it as we would do it today. So perhaps apart from the self -righteousness of the people and their pride and being deceived by their sin, perhaps that is one reason why they would ask why
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God no longer regards their offerings. And the answer that Malachi gives is profound, really.
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He says, God was a witness between husband and wife. He's telling them that marriage was and is not a private matter between the husband and wife.
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He tells them that the Lord sees that he cares deeply about marriage and that he will hold each of them accountable for it.
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God cares so much about the marriages of his people, that faithlessness in that area will have an immense effect of how he relates to worship.
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Now men, women, those of you who are married, when you've gone through a season of coldness, perhaps when you haven't found joy in your worship, when you felt like maybe you're worshiping in vain, when you're not seeing the point in coming to church or worshiping, when you feel like your prayers are empty, when you feel like you have no fervency, no earnestness in your prayers, have you ever stopped and seriously considered the state of your marriage?
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Have you stopped and thought if there are areas in which maybe you have not been faithful to your spouse, where you have not honored and loved them the way the
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Bible says you ought to? Maybe there's a lack of reconciliation in a specific area.
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Perhaps you have not ministered to each other faithfully. Maybe you have not spent time in the word and prayer together.
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Whatever it might be, I want you to know that God cares so much about your faithfulness in your marriage that it can truly affect his pleasure of your worship of him.
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And again, in relation to how this still applies, we find the same principle in the
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New Testament. If you want, you can turn to 1 Peter 3, verse 7.
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It might be a very familiar verse to all of us or all of those that are married.
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If you're not married yet, make sure you know this verse. Peter writes,
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Likewise, husbands, live with your wives in an understanding way, showing honor to the woman as the weaker vessel, since they are heirs with you of the grace of life.
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So that your prayers may not be hindered. Amen. Whether you are married, whether you're looking to get married soon, the way you honor your wife in your marriage, you living in an understanding way with her, knowing her intimately so that you can minister to her in the most
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God -honoring manner, you respecting and cherishing her as the excellent wife that the
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Lord has given you, her being more precious than a jewel, has direct impact on your prayer life and worship.
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And as you do all these things, albeit imperfectly, her worship will be less hindered as well.
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I'm not saying that the Lord will no longer care about you and cast you aside, but please understand that God cares so much that it affects your worship of Him.
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I found a Wayne Grudem commentary on this verse in 1
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Peter 3, and I thought it was really good. Wayne Grudem writes, So concerned is
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God that Christian husbands live in an understanding and loving way with their wives that He interrupts
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His relationship with them when they are not doing so. No Christian husband should presume to think that any spiritual good will be accomplished by his life without an effective ministry of prayer.
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And no husband may expect an effective prayer life unless he lives with his wife in an understanding way, bestowing honor on her.
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To take the time to develop and maintain a good marriage is God's will. It is serving
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God. It is a spiritual activity pleasing in His sight. Husbands and wives, future husbands and future wives, do not be faithless in your marriage so that your worship may be unhindered and pleasing to God.
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Thirdly, verse 15, consider the faithfulness in marriage that promotes godly offspring.
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Verse 15 says, Did He not make them one with a portion of the
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Spirit in their union? And what was the one God seeking? Godly offspring.
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So guard yourselves in your spirit and let none of you be faithless to the wife of your youth.
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This is the most difficult verse in this passage to make any sense of. The commentators have no idea what it really literally means.
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There is grammatically and syntactically so much that is incomplete in the Hebrew there.
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And so it's very obscure. And so many different translations and interpretations have been offered.
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I looked at a bunch of different English translations and they all seem to capture a similar sense in that someone, that someone referring to God, created one, a one union, because, again,
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God was seeking godly offspring. And I think the ESV, the way they render this, captures the general sense of the
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Hebrew fairly well and it fits the context of the entire passage just fine.
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Because we consider that Malachi is speaking about marriage, that he has addressed marriage to idolaters and that he addresses divorce in verse 16.
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He has spoken about the faithfulness to one's wife and the covenant between husband and wife. And it fits well with God making man and woman a one flesh union back in Genesis 2, 24, and that God's purpose of that union was to produce godly offspring.
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John MacArthur has noted that the divorce and marriage to idolatrous women would also be, in this context, very destructive to obtaining the godly remnant in the line of the promised
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Messiah. In addition to all of that, I think the ESV rendering fits nicely.
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Neil has read it for us with Matthew chapter 19 and what Jesus says to the
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Pharisees there when he calls them to remember that a man is to hold fast to his wife and that what
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God had joined together, no man was to separate. So the interpretation, then, that's how the
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ESV renders it, that God had made a union between man and woman in marriage that was not to be separated or defiled by either marrying pagans or divorce, and that that union served the purpose to produce a godly offspring to preserve a lineage for the coming
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Messiah and for his chosen people to continue to exist. All of that fits well within the context of the entire passage and with the totality of Scripture's teaching regarding marriage.
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And this is also one of the... There's three main interpretations of this passage. This one is one of them, and we find ourselves in good company along John MacArthur and John Calvin, so we can rest assured that we're good.
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We're good. Before we continue,
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I want to say this. I'm aware that when we talk about marriage and everything associated with it, it can sometimes be a very sensitive and difficult subject for some of us, and perhaps some of us in this room have experienced divorce and family somewhere.
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And as we work our way through this text, through the rest of this passage,
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I just want us to know that we are not judging anybody.
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We do not know any circumstances or anything like that. Scripture permits divorce under very, very strict circumstances, and there's always forgiveness to be found in Christ.
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But what Malachi has laid out here is the God -intended ideal for marriage, and we ought to pursue that with all our might.
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But in a fallen world where people sin, divorce is a reality, and we cannot deny that.
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If some of us have experienced this or have gone through this, I don't know. You being here is such a praise item to God that you are a faithful believer, that you raise your children faithfully in the
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Lord, and that is a testament to God's grace in your life, and that He accomplishes
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His purposes and works all things for the good of His people. So I praise
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Him for your faithfulness to Him, if that applies to you. Now going back to the godly offspring, let's think through that a little bit.
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Children we know from Scripture are a heritage from the Lord. They're a great gift and a blessing to any marriage, and the best environment for children to grow up, to become godly,
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Christ -loving, Christ -exalting, gospel -proclaiming men and women, which is what God desires them to be, is a home where the father and the mother are committed to be faithful to their marriage covenant before the
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Lord and aim to raise God -fearing children. The best setting for godly children is a home where the father is the spiritual leader, leading daily family worship, where he loves his wife like Christ loved the
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Church, a home where the mother loves her husband and children, where she's self -controlled, keeps herself pure, and works in the home, a home where husband and wife commit themselves to the daily reading of the
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Word and prayer so that they may teach God's Word diligently to their children, raising them up in the instruction and discipline of the
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Lord. Faithful marriages with godly children that end up being on fire for Christ are essential for the upholding of a moral society.
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I came across this study in about 1900, about 150 years after Jonathan Edwards died.
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There was a man named Albert Edward Winship, and he did a study on the descendants of Jonathan Edwards and his wife
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Sarah. And what the study revealed is remarkable. It showed that out of their descendants,
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I believe it was around 1400 or so that they studied, it showed that 13 of them were college presidents, 65 of them were professors, 100 of them were lawyers and a dean of a law school, 30 were judges, 66 physicians, a dean of a medical school, 80 holders of public office, 3 senators, mayors of 3 large cities, governors of 3 states, a vice president of the
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United States, and a controller of the United States Treasury. They had together written over 135 books and edited 18 journals and periodicals.
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And I love this, over 100 of them were missionaries, were on mission boards or clergymen or theological professors, husbands and wives.
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Remain faithful to one another. Honor and glorify God by raising up godly offspring.
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Raising up godly offspring. That aspect of the ministry of marriage has an eternal impact that we cannot even begin to understand in this life.
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Even the world recognizes the importance of the family and the impact a healthy God -honoring family has on society.
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It knows that it is the foundation for a moral society and it tries its best to destroy it.
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Especially in our days where we have a great growing interest in the socialist and communist ideologies.
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It's interesting that Vladimir Lenin, Shane had shared an article with me this last week in his attempt to build a totalitarian state building on the communist ideology of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in the early 20th century.
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He tried to destroy the concept of a biblical marriage and family. He had equated marriage with slavery, trying to make the case that freedom from monogamous marriage would be the best thing for any woman.
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And so what they did was make divorce easy and abortion available on demand. One article from 2013, it's a bit old, it claimed that Russia, even about 90 years after that, was still the world leader in divorces and abortions.
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I'm afraid that even since the 1920s, in the last hundred years, the attack on the family has not gotten any less.
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As we have less and less marriages last and less and less children being raised with a Christian worldview, we see our morality of society continue to disappear.
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Again, parents, those of you who are anticipating to be parents in the not -so -distant future, do not believe the lies of the world when they tell you that marriage is a form of slavery.
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Don't believe when they tell you that children are nothing but a burden that take away your free time, your time with the boys or shopping trips with the girls, whatever it may be.
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Don't believe that they just cost you money and cost you headaches. Children, godly children, are rich blessing of the covenantal one -flesh union between a man and a woman.
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God seeks godly offspring in a marriage. So commit yourselves to the teaching and the instructing of your children in the word, in the word of God, for the glory of God and the continued proclamation of the gospel to the ends of the earth for generations to come.
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Don't let the gospel die with you. Don't be faithless in your union to one another and raise up godly children.
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Lastly, this will be somewhat quick, our last point, faithfulness in marriage is a daily reminder of Christ.
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Look at verse 16 again. For the man who does not love his wife but divorces her, says the
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Lord, the God of Israel covers his garment with violence, says the Lord of hosts. So guard yourself in your spirit and do not be faithless.
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Once again, you might notice a footnote in your Bible telling you that the first half of the verse could also be translated something else.
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The Lord, the God of Israel says that he hates divorce and him who covers his garment with violence.
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Again, though these are things we're thinking about and discussing, I don't think either translation will bear too much of an impact of the general sense of the verse.
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If it's the husband hating his wife and divorcing her or if it's God hating divorce.
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Neither of those renderings condone the practice of divorce and the charge of not being faithless at the end of the verse only further implies that.
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Another challenge in this verse is the phrase cover his garment with violence. Again, many different interpretations are offered on this.
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And scripture uses this kind of imagery in a couple of different ways. One of them is it expresses a defiling of one's character with an act of violent wrongdoing.
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We see this in, it's used in Psalm 73 verse 6 and Psalm 109 verse 18 if you want to look it up.
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But again, the immediate context, I think, helps us a lot in interpreting this because garment is also used as a figurative expression of obtaining a wife.
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That's what we see between Ruth and Boaz and Ruth chapter 3 and verse 9 and Ezekiel 16 verse 8.
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And when we stay within this context of our passage, then I think we can, with a good amount of certainty, say that Malachi here is rejecting the notion of divorce for convenience because that's what the
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Israelites were doing at that time. And that the covering of one's garment means doing moral wrong to one's wife or husband by divorcing her or him.
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Malachi's teaching, again, is perfectly consistent with Christ's teaching in Matthew 19 that Neal has read when he said to the
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Pharisees, because of your hardness of heart, Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so.
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Malachi is saying that God is not a proof of divorce and that husbands and wives are to remain faithful to one another in the marriage covenant.
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Divorce is an act of faithlessness towards one's spouse and Malachi says, guard yourselves.
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He says, don't be faithless toward one another in that regard. And that, then,
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I think, a covenant that is not to be broken by unfaithfulness,
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I think that is the greatest blessing that a marriage can offer because it is a picture of the gospel and Christ's faithfulness toward us.
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Let's turn to Ephesians 5. Again, a very well -known passage regarding marriage and the relationship between a husband and wife, but it's so good
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I want to read it. Ephesians 5, verses 22 through 33.
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Paul writes to the church in Ephesus. He says, wives, submit to your own husbands, he says, as to the
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Lord, for the husband is the head of the wife, even if Christ is the head of the church, his body and is himself its savior.
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Now, as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands.
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Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish.
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And the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies, he who loves his wife loves himself, for no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body.
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Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.
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This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.
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If marriage is on the horizon for you, and if you've been married for a long time, you will know very well that you will fail in what
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Paul says here. Every husband, every wife will fail at some area, at some point or another.
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Husband and wife will sin against each other in many different ways. There's pain, and there might be anger, and there might be frustration, and when that happens, you must let the nature of marriage, what
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Malachi lays out for us here, the picture of what marriage is and what it represents, you must let it steer you toward continued love and faithfulness for one another.
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Remember that you have sinned against the Lord much more than your wife or husband has sinned against you and will ever sin against you, and you have been forgiven much more than you will ever have to forgive yourselves, and that you will continue to be faithful to one another because Christ has been and will always remain faithful and will never cast you out, and that,
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I believe, is the greatest blessing of a godly, faithful marriage, the daily reminder of Christ's love, faithfulness, and forgiveness, and an imitating of the love that He has shown for His church, that every day you're driven more and more to Him as you seek to remain faithful to your spouse until death do you part.
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I'll end with a quote from John Piper from his book, This Momentary Marriage, which
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I think is a great summation of Ephesians 5, 22 and 33. He writes,
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Marriage is patterned after Christ's covenant relationship to His redeemed people, the church, and therefore the highest meaning and the most ultimate purpose of marriage is to put the covenant relationship of Christ and His church on display.
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That is why marriage exists. If you are married, that is why you are married. If you hope to be, that should be your dream.
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Let's pray. Thank you for listening to another sermon from Grace Fellowship Church.
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Instagram at Grace Church, Y -E -G, all one word. Finally, you can visit us at our website, graceedmonton .ca