Resources

Heavenly Father, thank you that you speak your living word to us in the Scriptures. Sometimes your say hard but true things that we don’t want to hear. This morning, by your Holy Spirit, give us willing hearts and open ears, to hear your voice and to be changed by it. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

Here is my marriage certificate. It has been signed by Vivienne, by me and by witnesses. This certificate confirms that Vivienne and I made promises to each other on 28 March 1981. Vivienne promised me that she would be my wife and would continue to love me “for better, for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health…till death us do part…” And I promised to Vivienne that I would be her husband in the same unconditional way, whatever happens between that day and the day one of us dies. I depend on that promise of Vivienne’s every day of my life.

Let’s hear God’s perspective on this. We can do that because in Malachi 2 (the next section in our series on Malachi) we can hear God talking to his people through the prophet. Please have that open in front of you. Malachi is the last book of Old Testament, and Malachi 2.10-16 is there on page 801. And my title for this is ‘Do Not Be Faithless’.

God is speaking to the people of Judah. This is after the return from the Babylonian exile and about 400 years before the coming of Christ. It was a time of spiritual decline, scepticism about the word of God, neglect of God’s commands and widespread breakdown of family life. In other words, they were in a situation disturbingly similar to our own in this country today. I have four points to make from these verses:

1. God’s people have broken faith with one another

Look at Malachi 2.10:

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?

The people Malachi is addressing here are the Jews – the covenant people of God. So when he says Have we not all one Father? he’s thinking primarily in that narrow sense. In our terms, from a New Testament perspective, he’s talking to the wider church – those who call themselves Christians and claim allegiance to Christ. And let’s remember that constitutionally this country claims to be Christian and to live under the rule of Christ, and what is more still about half of the population call themselves Christian. However, in another sense, all people are God’s people in the sense that God is the creator of us all. And that’s very important when we come to think about marriage and family, because marriage is not just an institution for believers. It is a creation ordinance – a gift of God to everyone. Hence the foundational family life texts in the Bible come in Genesis 1-2. I spoke about that a month ago. Marriage is built into the very fabric of creation as God designed it. And he commanded it because he wanted us to know his blessings. That’s right at the start of the Old Testament.

What’s the situation by the time we come to the end of the Old Testament, to Malachi? God’s people are being faithless with one another. What does that mean? It means breaking promises, breaking trust, breaking faith – being unfaithful. How is that happening here? (Malachi 2.11):

Judah has been faithless, and abomination has been committed in Israel and in Jerusalem. For Judah has profaned the sanctuary of the Lord, which he loves, and has married the daughter of a foreign god.

God’s people have married the daughters of foreign gods. Now let’s be clear, the issue here is not ethnicity, or race. It’s idolatry (because the Lord had warned them that marrying those who worshipped false gods would drag God’s people into the same idolatry) and he’d been proved right. But there’s another underlying issue: this was forbidden, so these relationships were entered into in clear breach of God’s commands. What’s the equivalent for us today? Certainly the issue of believers marrying unbelievers remains, but there’s also the wider application to relationships that are contrary to God’s clear commands. Casual sexual relationships, homosexual relationships, and co-habitation without marriage all fall into that category.

In the mid 1960’s, the proportion of women marrying for the first time who lived with their husbands before marriage was 5%. By the 1990’s, it was around 70%. Now it’s around 90%. In 1964, the proportion of births that took place outside marriage was 7%. Now it’s over 50% for the first time since records began, which was in 1845. And in the words of the Marriage Foundation:

This matters because unmarried couples are far more likely to split up than married couples. The equation is simple: Fewer marriages means more family breakdown.

Back in Judah, even where the marriages were in line with God’s will in the first place there is a problem. So, Malachi 2.14:

…the Lord was witness between you and the wife of your youth, to whom you have been faithless, though she is your companion and your wife by covenant.

What’s a covenant? It’s a binding promise. You’ve broken the promise you made to your wife, God says. (Malachi 2.15):

…let none of you be faithless to the wife of your youth.

But in all these ways, we fall under the same rebuke as those Jews 2400 years ago. A century ago there were a few hundred divorces each year in the UK. In 1961 there were 25,000. Now it’s over 100,000. God’s people have broken faith with one another. That’s the first point.

2. When we break faith with one another we are also breaking faith with God

We profane the covenant of our fathers (Malachi 2.10). We profane the sanctuary of the Lord, which he loves (Malachi 2.11). The sanctuary is the temple. In New Testament terms, the temple is both Christ himself, and the church which is the body of Christ. When we break faith, we are dishonouring Christ and desecrating his body and his bride. We cannot isolate the way we treat one another from the way we relate to God. When we break faith with one another, we break faith with God as well. That’s point two.

3. God finds breaking faith repulsive

That is literally true. When we break faith with one another and we break faith with God, our relationship with God is cut off and we are repelled from him. A gulf is created not just in our families but between us and God. God finds breaking faith repulsive. When we break faith, it is watched closely by God (Malachi 2.14):

…the Lord was witness between you and the wife of your youth.

It is a detestable thing (Malachi 2.11):

…abomination has been committed in Israel and in Jerusalem.

It is a desecration of what God loves (Malachi 1.2):

“I have loved you,” says the Lord…

God loves those he witnesses being wounded by unfaithfulness (Malachi 2.12):

May the Lord cut off from the tents of Jacob any descendant of the man who does this [that is, rejecting God’s command by marrying a pagan woman], who brings an offering to the Lord of hosts!

It’s no good putting up a good spiritual front, coming to church, saying all the rights things, whilst blatantly and unrepentantly disobeying God. Breaking faith is hated by God. And he hates the violence – both physical (sometimes) and emotional (always) that is involved in breaking faith (Malachi 2.16):

For the man who does not love his wife but divorces her, says the Lord, the God of Israel, covers his garment with violence, says the Lord of hosts. So guard yourselves in your spirit, and do not be faithless.

God knows what’s best for us all, and wants what’s best for us all, and commands us to live in a way that’s best for us all. So when we reject his commands and break faith in family life, we cause great suffering as a result of what you might call our emotional violence. You can see that happening here in Judah (Malachi 2.13-14):

And this 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 favour from your hand. But you say, “Why does he not?”…

Life is going badly for them. They’re miserable. They’re suffering. And they’re blaming God. But the reason for their suffering lies in the breakdown of marriage and family life brought on by the fact that they are breaking faith (Malachi 2.14):

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, though she is your companion and your wife by covenant.

And we experience the same thing all around us and in our own families too. The environment is tough for parents. Much on the media is promoting promiscuity, maligning marriage, and encouraging illegitimacy. And what’s the result of it all? Everyone gets hurt – and especially the children. When we break with one another, we cause great suffering. And God witnesses all of it – there is nowhere for us to hide from him. God finds breaking faith repulsive. And yet, despite all that, he never breaks faith with his people. In fact, that is why he hates it so much. It is utterly contrary to his character (Malachi 3.6):

For I the Lord do not change; therefore you, O children of Jacob, are not consumed.

Then the final point is this:

4. God calls us to return to him

Because God himself keeps faith, there’s always hope for us, whatever we’ve done. There’s always forgiveness in Christ if we return to him. And not just forgiveness. For us as individuals, for us as a church in this country, and for us as a nation, there’s great blessing to be found in returning to God and in living in obedience to his word and his ways. That’s wonderfully expressed in Malachi 4.2:

But for you who fear my name, the sun of righteousness shall rise with healing in its wings. You shall go out leaping like calves from the stall.

And again in Malachi 4.6:

And he [the coming prophet] will turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers…

That is, when we turn back to God, broken family relationships will be restored. There’s great blessing in obedience. But if we don’t return, the suffering will simply intensify. So Malachi 4.6 goes on:

…lest I come and strike the land with a decree of utter destruction.

We have to be quite clear that there can be no restoration of our relationship with God without also a renewed commitment to obedience to his commands. So Malachi 4.4 says:

Remember the law of my servant Moses…

And now after the coming of Christ, we need to add: Remember the words of Jesus – not least on marriage and divorce. And learn to be faithful; faithful to God, faithful to one another, faithful in singleness, faithful in marriage, faithful to our families (Malachi 2.16):

…So guard yourselves in your spirit, and do not be faithless.

Keeping faith generates a warmth in family life that powers the whole nation. But when God-given restraints are burst open as more and more people break faith in marriage and family life, the power that should be such a source of blessing instead lays waste vast swathes of society like a devastating flood. None of us is unaffected by this flood of breaking faith that’s been taking place over the last generation. Some of us have been directly on the receiving end. Some of us, no doubt, have broken faith ourselves. Others have been caught up indirectly in the fall-out. All too many of us carry the scars – or the still open wounds. For all of us, there is hope. And that hope is found in Jesus. Where forgiveness is needed and asked for, Jesus gives it. The debts to God that we’ve amassed because of our failures, he’s already written off at the cross. Where emotional healing is needed, Jesus provides it – though healing takes time. As Isaiah said prophetically of Jesus (Isaiah 53.5):

…upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his stripes we are healed.

So we don’t need to be afraid but we do need to return to God, by faith in Christ, day in and day out. And with his help, in whatever state of life God has placed us, we need to commit ourselves to keeping faith – in our singleness, in our families, in our marriages. And then we’ll be on the receiving end of God’s great faithfulness to us. And by the grace of God, the tide will turn and the sea of suffering caused by breaking faith will recede, and the blessings of faithful family life will spread more and more widely once again. Let’s be praying that it will be so. And let’s be working for it to be so. We need to be a distinctive community. We need to bear witness to the society around us that there is another way. By what we teach and by how we live, we need to show that keeping faith, hand in hand with forgiveness, works. Let’s pray:

So guard yourselves in your spirit, and do not be faithless. Lord God, you are our one Father. You created us. You have been so faithful to us. Despite our faithlessness, you have never broken faith with us. Father, we’re sorry for all the times we have broken faith. Thank you for the blood of Jesus that washes us clean and gives us a fresh start. By your grace and in your mercy, teach us to be like Jesus – and to keep faith. And use our witness to help turn the tide of sin and suffering in this nation. In Jesus’ name we pray, Amen.