Word of Salvation – Vol. 53 No.2 – January 2008

 

Breaking Faith

 

A Sermon by Rev Jack Kapinga

on Malachi 2:10-16

Scripture Reading: Ephesians 5:25-33

Suggested Singing: BoW 149; 216; 367; Rej 295

 

Brothers and sisters in our Lord Jesus Christ.

Introduction:

I think it’s fair to say that in our day and age, faithfulness is on the decline. In our day and age people are decreasing in their loyalty, their allegiances and their commitment. Let me give you some examples. There was a time when an AFL (or Rugby League) footballer would begin his career with a certain club and that’s where he’d stay until the day of his retirement. But now it’s not uncommon for a player to go to two clubs, or to three or four. They’ll be traded or they’ll go to where the money’s better and as a result they’ll change their allegiance on a regular basis.

Or think of politics. Do you remember when Cheryl Kernot, the leader of the Democrats, announced that she was joining the Labor party? Or do you remember when Peter Garrett, a prominent campaigner for the Greens, all of a sudden shifted his loyalty to one of the mainstream parties. You wouldn’t think it possible, but it happened.

Or think about employment patterns. When you speak to the older generation, it’s not unusual to meet people who worked in the same job or for the same company for 20 or 30 or even 40 years. But most younger people are less committed to their employer and change jobs quite often. But of course these things are not really a big issue. In the scheme of things, loyalty and commitment to a sports team or a political party or an employer are not all that important.

But in the passage that we’re looking at today, God tells us that there are some areas where loyalty and commitment do matter. God tells us about two aspects of life where faithfulness is of the utmost importance. And that’s what we’re going to be thinking about today.

1. God wants us to be faithful to Him

The first thing that God tells us in this passage is that we must be faithful to him. And in the first verse of our text he tells us why that is. Malachi is here speaking to the people of Israel and he says to them in verse 10, “Have we not all one Father? Did not one God create us?” What he is doing here is reminding the people who the Lord is and the special relationship they have with him. He is reminding them that there is only one true God. There is only one God who created this world and brought it into being. There is only one God who made mankind and gave us life, only one God who holds all things in his hands and to whom all people are accountable.

But more than that, he’s also telling the people of Israel that there is only one God who chose them to be his own. There is only one God who delivered them from their slavery and blessed them in every way, only one God who in his love brought them into a special relationship with himself, that of a Father to his children. The Lord is the one true God. The Lord is their Maker. And the Lord is their covenant partner, the one who promised that he would be their God and they would be his people. And so they must be faithful to him. But the problem is that they were not.

Malachi says, “Why do we profane the covenant of our fathers by breaking faith with one another?” God had done so much for them, he had made them glorious covenant promises. But yet together the people of Israel were failing to be loyal to the Lord. And so in verse 11 he goes on. He says, “Judah has broken faith. A detestable thing has been committed in Israel and in Jerusalem”. The people had been unfaithful and they had been so in a very particular way, by doing a detestable thing.

And what had they done? We’re told that “Judah has desecrated the sanctuary the LORD loves, by marrying the daughter of a foreign god.” The people of Israel were ruining their relationship with the Lord, and the way they were doing that was by marrying foreigners. You see God had warned them many times to never do this. Many other nations surrounded Israel, especially in this time after the exile. But God had told the men of Israel never to seek a wife from these foreign lands.

But why was that? Was it a racial thing? Did God not want his people to mix their blood with other ethnic groups? No that’s not it. The issue is not racial but it is religious. It doesn’t just say that the Israelites had married foreigners. But it says that they had married the daughter of a foreign god. You see all these nations around Israel had their own gods that they worshipped. But of course these were false gods, they were no more than dumb idols that could do nothing. But when the Israelite men took foreign wives, they also committed themselves to their gods. That is why the Lord warned them never to do it.

For example, in Deuteronomy 7, the Lord said concerning the other nations, “Do not intermarry with them. Do not give your daughters to their sons or take their daughters for your sons, for they will turn your sons away from following me to serve other gods, and the LORD’s anger will burn against you and will quickly destroy you.” But despite the warning the Israelites had done it anyway. And now they were worshipping other gods, bowing down to idols and sacrificing on their altars. These were false gods, but yet the people gave them the worship that was due to the Lord and to him alone. They had broken faith with the Lord. And as a result they would be punished.

In verse 12 it says, “As for the man who does this, whoever he may be, may the LORD cut him off from the tents of Jacob – even though he brings offerings to the LORD Almighty.” These people had not rejected the Lord altogether, they still worshipped him. But they were unfaithful because they were worshipping other gods at the same time. Their loyalties were divided and as a result God was going to cut them off. They would no longer be his people. They would no longer receive his blessing.

Brothers and sisters, the message of these verses is clear isn’t it? God tells his people that they must be faithful to him and him alone. And if they weren’t, then they will be cut off from him. But that same message applies to us today. There is only one true God and that is the Lord, the God of the Bible, the God of true Christianity. He is the one who made us, he is the only reason we exist. And he has chosen us to be his people. As Christians, we understand that much better today than the Israelites did back then.

The One True God is the only one who has given his Son, Jesus Christ, as a perfect atoning sacrifice for our sin. He is the only one who has turned our lives around by his Holy Spirit. He is the only one who can care for us and bless us every day. He is the only one who can give us the promise of eternal life. And so it is so obvious that we must be faithful to him. But are we? That’s the vital question that we need to consider.

It’s very popular today for people to worship many gods. They say it’s all the same in the end and so we should take a bit from here and a bit from there. For example a while back there was an interview on “60 Minutes” with the popular Hollywood movie star, Jim Carrey. He took the reporter to a secluded spot on his property and he said, “This is where I hang out with Buddha and Krishna and you know all those guys.” The reporter asked him, “Are you a Buddhist?” And to that he replied, “I’m a Buddhist, I’m a Muslim, I’m a Christian, I’m whatever you want me to be. It all comes down to the same thing.”

This sort of attitude has become very popular and it has even infected some prominent sectors of the Christian church. But congregation, if we were to worship another god, then we would break faith with the Lord. Did Buddha create the world and give you life? Did Muhammad die to pay for your sin? Can Confucius care for you each day? Can the gods of Hinduism give you eternal life? Of course not. There is only one God who can do these things, and that is the Lord.

But you know these are not the only kinds of gods that compete for our attention. Your god is whatever you live for, whatever is central to your life. For some people life is about money, about investments and real estate and career. For others life is about relationships, they worship him or her, they worship their children or their grandchildren. For some life is about pleasure and fun and relaxation, looking after yourself. For some life is about achievement and experiences, for many others life is about sport.

But congregation we need to think very carefully, what do we live for? Is the Lord our only God, or do we also worship other things? Is there something in your life that takes up more of your time and more of your energy or more of your devotion than do the things of God? Is it possible that we have divided our loyalties, is it possible that we have broken faith with the Lord?

To break faith with the Lord is a terrible thing. For only he is our Maker and only he is our Saviour. He is the one who bought us with the blood of his own Son and set us on the road to glory. And so he demands that we commit ourselves to him and him alone, only he is worthy of our worship; and he is a jealous God. But if we divide our loyalties then we cannot serve him in the way that we should. And in the end we will drift away and he will cut us off. He will cut us off from his love, from his promises, from his salvation and from his heaven. And that would be a terrible thing. In the first part of our text today, the Lord tells us that we must be faithful to him.

2. God wants us to be faithful in marriage

However, in the second part of our text, the Lord also confronts the Israelites about another aspect of life in which they needed to be faithful. In the second part of our text he tells us that we must also be faithful in marriage. God says that if we are faithful in our relationship to him then that faithfulness should overflow into our relationship with our husband or our wife. And the Bible tells us that this is important. Because marriage is also a covenant and so our relationships as husband and wife should be a picture of God’s relationship to his people.

And that is what we saw earlier when we read from Ephesians 5. There it said that husbands must love their wives. And why? Because they are a picture of how Christ loves the church. And it said that husbands must care for their wives, because they are a picture of how Christ cares for his people. And it said that husband and wife must be faithful to each other, because they are a picture of how Christ is faithful to us and how we should be faithful to him.

And so what the Lord tells his people is that as a consequence of their faithfulness to him, they must also be faithful in marriage. But when we look at these verses in Malachi, we discover that just as the Israelites were breaking faith with God, so they were also breaking faith in marriage. In verse 13 God declares, “Another thing you do: You flood the LORD’s altar with tears. You weep and wail because he no longer pays attention to your offerings or accepts them with pleasure from your hands. You ask Why?” The people felt God wasn’t blessing them and they couldn’t understand why.

But he goes on to tell them. He says, “It is because the LORD is acting as the witness between you and the wife of your youth, because you have broken faith with her, though she is your partner, the wife of your marriage covenant.” God tells the people that not only did they break faith with him but they were breaking faith with their wives. They had gotten married in their younger days, they had made a lifelong commitment, but now the men of Israel were discarding their wives and turning to someone else.

And why was this so bad? Well in verse 15 it says, “Has not the LORD made them one? In flesh and spirit they are his. And why one? Because he was seeking godly offspring. So guard yourself in your spirit, and do not break faith with the wife of your youth. I hate divorce says the LORD God of Israel.” What they were doing was bad because they had made covenant promises and they had done so before the Lord. He makes husband and wife one flesh and this is his way of providing godly offspring for himself. And for that reason he hates divorce.

But divorcing their wives is what the men of Israel were doing. For no good reason they were breaking their covenant vows, they were breaking faith with their wives and they were divorcing them. And because they did the Lord was angry with them and he was withholding his blessing.

But this is quite a message for our society today, isn’t it. For we live in a time when divorce rates are at an all time high. Almost 50% of marriages don’t go the distance and most of us will have seen it in our own families. But even more serious is the fact that we live in a time when divorce is no longer seen as a bad thing. People now get married with the full understanding that if things don’t work out after a few years then they will simply put an end to it.

We should remember that Scripture does speak of two situations in which God allows divorce. First of all in Matthew 5 Jesus says, “I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for marital unfaithfulness, causes her to become an adulteress.” In other words divorce is sinful unless your husband or wife has been unfaithful to you. If they have committed adultery or been unfaithful in some other way, then they have already broken the covenant bond. And so the innocent party can get a divorce without committing a sin.

And then another passage we need to think about is 1 Corinthians 7. Paul says there, “If any brother has a wife who is not a believer and she is willing to live with him, he must not divorce her. And if a woman has a husband who is not a believer and he is willing to live with her, she must not divorce him… But if the unbeliever leaves, let him do so. A believing man or woman is not bound in such circumstances; God has called us to live in peace.” And so this passage says that if there’s a marriage between a believer and an unbeliever, and the unbeliever cannot accept the believer’s faith and walks out of the relationship, then divorce is allowed. For our bond to God is even more important than our bond to our spouse.

So these passages tell us that there are some limited occasions when God allows divorce to take place. But we need to remember that these are the exception and even then divorce is still the last resort. But that is not what usually happens in our society today. We live in an age when divorce is often the first option and it is carried out without hesitation. People get sick of each other, they don’t feel like trying anymore and so they break faith and finish the marriage. This is what the Israelites were doing and this is what God is talking about when he says that he hates divorce.

So what does all this mean for us? Does it mean that we should look down on those people who have been divorced in the past? Does it mean that we should feel terribly guilty if we happen to be one of those people? Well the answer to that is, “No”. If that is our reaction then we have no concept of God’s forgiveness. Divorce is not the unforgivable sin, and which of us have not done things in our past which are just as bad if not far worse?

For a start many divorced Christians are in that situation because their partner was unfaithful, or because their partner turned out not to be a Christian, or because this all happened before they were a Christian themselves. But even when that is not the case, if a person is truly sorry for what they have done, if they have confessed to the Lord with a repentant heart, then they are forgiven.

And so what that means is that when we read a passage like this one, we should not dwell on what was wrong in the past but rather we should resolve to do right in the future. Some of us here are not yet married, but may hope to be one day. If that is the case, then you must go into marriage realising that it is an exclusive and lifelong commitment. It is a covenant made before the Lord and so you shouldn’t get married unless you are prepared to make every effort to make it last. Because God hates divorce.

But many others of us are married. And so we must do all we can to be faithful to our husband or our wife. The world tells us that if things get tough then you just opt out. But God tells us that we must not do that but instead we should do everything we can to make it work. The world tells us that you only stick around as long as you are getting what you want out of the relationship. But God tells us to think not of ourselves first but of our partner, that we should love and care for them just as Christ loves and cares for his church. For all of us the message is the same. As the last verse of our text reminds us, “So guard yourself in your spirit, and do not break faith.”

Conclusion

Congregation, as I stated at the beginning, in our day and age faithfulness is on the decline. People are less committed to their sports team, their political party and their work. But as I said, these things are not big issues. But yet the general decline in faithfulness also extends to things that do matter. And we have been alerted to two of those things today.

God is telling us in our text that as Christian people we must be people who are marked by faithfulness. We must be faithful in marriage. For God has joined us together. And our marriages also reflect the relationship we have with the Lord. And so we must also be faithful to him. The Lord has given us life on this earth, and the Lord has given us new and eternal life in Jesus Christ. And because he has we must worship him alone.

Let us not be like the society that we live in. Let us not break faith, but instead be people who show the world what faithfulness is like. Let us be totally committed in marriage, and let us be totally committed to the Lord.

Amen.