COVENANT FAITHLESSNESS

Introduction

-{Malachi 2}

-A few years ago there were several stories of people who scammed people out of their money. They promised investors the possibility of making millions or billions of dollars, only to lose what was entrusted to them or it was outright fraud. One of the more famous was Bernie Madoff who was given money to invest, only to turn it into a Ponzi scheme. As one victim said, “we trusted everything in his hands.” But then they lost everything. Madoff was faithless to those who put trust in him. He was entrusted with an investment, but then he was faithless to those with whom he had built a relationship and with whom he had an agreement.

-God’s people are also in an agreement, a covenant, with God and are entrusted with much. But when they become indifferent toward God they become indifferent toward the covenant that they are a part of, and once indifferent to God and the covenant, they become faithless in the relationships that are a part of that covenant. God’s covenant people are given trust within covenant, but when God and the covenant no longer matter, they become faithless toward the people with whom they should be the most trustworthy. That is what we find in Malachi’s day, but sadly it creeps into our day as well. My prayer is that if we have become faithless in these relationships we find room for repentance and return to a covenant faithfulness with those whom we should be closest.

Malachi 2:10–16 NET 2nd ed.

10 Do we not all have one father? Did not one God create us? Why do we betray one another, thus making light of the covenant of our ancestors? 11 Judah has become disloyal, and unspeakable sins have been committed in Israel and Jerusalem. For Judah has profaned the holy things that the Lord loves and has turned to a foreign god! 12 May the Lord cut off from the community of Jacob every last person who does this, as well as the person who presents improper offerings to the Lord of Heaven’s Armies! 13 You also do this: You cover the altar of the Lord with tears as you weep and groan, because he no longer pays any attention to the offering nor accepts it favorably from you. 14 Yet you ask, “Why?” The Lord is testifying against you on behalf of the wife you married when you were young, to whom you have become unfaithful even though she is your companion and wife by law. 15 No one who has even a small portion of the Spirit in him does this. What did our ancestor do when seeking a child from God? Be attentive, then, to your own spirit, for one should not be disloyal to the wife he took in his youth. 16 “I hate divorce,” says the Lord God of Israel, “and the one who is guilty of violence,” says the Lord of Heaven’s Armies. “Pay attention to your conscience, and do not be unfaithful.”

-{pray}

-The Jews were God’s covenant people but had turned their backs on God. God in turn sent them into exile for 70 years, but God returned the people to the land of Israel. Even though they saw God’s faithfulness, the people became spiritually apathetic and faithless in their covenant relationships. To those with whom they should have been most faithful, they were most faithless. In v. 10 God accuses them of making light or profaning the covenant, and it showed in the way that they related to others. I want us to reflect on how faithful we are in the relationships mentioned seeing we too are in covenant with God through Jesus Christ. Let’s gauge our own faithfulness. We first find that there is an accusation of:

1) Faithlessness to other Christians

-I am putting this into words that reflect our covenant with God, but what Malachi accuses the people of is being unfaithful to other members of the covenant community. For the Jews it would have been a faithlessness toward other Jews. For us in Christ, it is a faithlessness toward other Christians.

-At the end of v. 9 the people are accused of showing partiality or favoritism in their relationships with other members of the covenant. And then in v. 10 Malachi wonders why anyone would treat brothers and sisters of covenant that way since we all have one Father who created us. And within the context of the church, we all have one Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. That being the case, seeing we are all on equal footing, why would we treat one group of brothers and sisters one way, but then treat another group of brothers and sisters in some sort of inferior way.

-In v. 11 Malachi accuses them of being disloyal / faithless. Some translations say that they acted treacherously toward their fellow covenant members. When you treat Christians as lesser than you or you treat a certain type of Christian as better than other Christians you are faithless to the covenant. An example of this in the Bible might be in Acts when the Jewish-speaking Christian widows were receiving care from the daily distribution, but the Hellenistic Greek-speaking widows were not. Now, this was probably unintentional, but it showed a heart issue where you favored one group over another. This is a problem because in Christ, everyone is equal, and should be treated equally. Paul told us:

Galatians 3:26–29 NET 2nd ed.

26 For in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God through faith. 27 For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. 28 There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female—for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. 29 And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s descendants, heirs according to the promise.

-It doesn’t matter who you are or what situation you are in, in Christ you are all co-heirs—all on the same level. Yet, sometimes Christians are faithless and treat some better and some worse. How this might look like in the church is that we might show favoritism for the rich over the poor. We might think that the rich might be more likely to return favors, even though Jesus said not to do things with an expectation of getting anything in return. James warned us

James 2:1–4 NET 2nd ed.

1 My brothers and sisters, do not show prejudice if you possess faith in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ. 2 For if someone comes into your assembly wearing a gold ring and fine clothing, and a poor person enters in filthy clothes, 3 do you pay attention to the one who is finely dressed and say, “You sit here in a good place,” and to the poor person, “You stand over there,” or “Sit on the floor”? 4 If so, have you not made distinctions among yourselves and become judges with evil motives?

-Or, maybe we’ll show favoritism for people who are more similar to us in race or color or occupation or something that is worldly, even though what I read from Paul earlier said in Christ there is no Jew or Greek. We might show favoritism to the powerful over the vulnerable. We might show favoritism to insiders of the church versus outsiders. There are hundreds of ways that this could happen, and Malachi warns the Jews, thereby warning us, that when you are indifferent toward God and the things of God you might show this tendency of being faithless toward other brothers and sisters in Christ.

-It reminds me of the movie Jesus Revolution about the Jesus movement of the 60s-70s where there was a great move of God to save people especially in what might be called the hippie culture. And when these hippies who loved Jesus started coming to more traditional churches, there were people who shunned them rather than rejoicing that they were brothers and sisters in Christ.

-When we treat brothers and sisters in Christ in such a way we are being faithless to them and faithless to the covenant that we share. Let that not be us. May we embrace our brothers and sisters in Christ no matter the differences we might have, because we have the most important thing in common—believing in Jesus Christ for eternal life. Nothing much else matters. But then Malachi narrows in on a specific human relationship that has to do with covenant, and spoke against:

2) Faithlessness to our spouses

-I have been a part of several weddings over the past few weeks, so the subject of marriage is fresh on my mind. And something that I emphasize in all the wedding ceremonies is that what the man and woman are doing is making a covenant with one another and with God. This is a special covenant, a special agreement. The marriage covenant is older than any other covenant other than God’s covenant with Creation. It began in the garden when God presented Eve to Adam, and has existed ever since. Man is to leave father and mother and cleave to his wife. No other human relationship is as important as this one. We find out later from Paul that this is the case because marriage is a picture of Christ’s relationship with the church.

-Marriage being the first anointed human relationship and the picture of our salvation has a special meaning and it is ratified with a covenant. And to treat it lightly is not something that God tolerates. However, when we are indifferent in our relationship to God, we start to treat these covenant relationships like they don’t matter. If your relationship with God doesn’t matter, none of these other relationships will either. This is what happened in Malachi’s day.

-In v. 13 Malachi gives voice to these faithless people. They’re complaining that God doesn’t seem to be paying any attention to all the religious motion that they’re going through. As Malachi has previously charged them, they go through religious motions but their heart is far from God. And God doesn’t seem to be answering their prayers. There is a stagnation in their relationship with God. God seems far away from them and they say they can’t figure out why this is happening. So, God gives them the answer in v. 14:

Malachi 2:14 NET 2nd ed.

14 Yet you ask, “Why?” The Lord is testifying against you on behalf of the wife you married when you were young, to whom you have become unfaithful even though she is your companion and wife by law.

-God, in essence, is saying that He isn’t listening to a word they’re saying, He isn’t accepting their worship, because they have done their spouses wrong. V. 15 ends with the charge that they are being disloyal to the wife of their youth.

-What they seem to have specifically been doing is they were divorcing their Jewish wives and marrying pagan wives. Some translations at the end of v. 11 talk about marrying the daughter of a foreign god, meaning they have gotten rid of the wives who shared their religious heritage and with whom they were in covenant, and then married unbelieving pagans. They cast aside the person with whom they were in covenant, and they broke their covenant with their spouse and married someone who hated God. And this is wrong on many levels.

-First, divorce is not God’s perfect will. I am trying to be sensitive because there are many here today who have suffered through a divorce, and it is a painful, raw subject. But, those who have gone through a divorce can testify that it is rough, and they wouldn’t wish it on anyone. Yes, there are biblical grounds for divorce. But even then it is not God’s original intention. But in our passage, God through Malachi is getting on to those who treat marriage carelessly and thoughtlessly and do not give it the spiritual weight that it is due. He is speaking to those who think changing marriages is like changing clothes everyday. They are the cause of the divorce and they don’t care. They feel justified because they think God wants them happy and they’ll do whatever they want to be happy. But God says:

Malachi 2:16 NET 2nd ed.

16 “I hate divorce,” says the Lord God of Israel, “and the one who is guilty of violence,” says the Lord of Heaven’s Armies. “Pay attention to your conscience, and do not be unfaithful.”

-As with most of this passage, the different translations are kind of all over the map with this one, but what it seems to be implying is that God is equating divorce to violence. You do violence to your marriage if you commit adultery, you do violence to your marriage if you decide to leave your spouse for a younger man or woman. You do violence to your spouse by leaving them high and dry. Again, this is not considering the biblical reasons for divorce, but what we might call divorce as a lifestyle choice. Because, think of the violence it does to the picture of Christ and the church. In essence, if you divorce your spouse for just any reason, you’re saying that Christ would leave us and break covenant with us for any reason.

-But, I do want to say that there is grace and mercy in Christ. And God can forgive and redeem and heal even in the most difficult circumstances or our worst choices. Whether we are divorced because of someone else’s choices or because of our own, that does not have to define our lives. If the divorce is on someone else, God can heal. If you caused the divorce but are repentant, God can forgive.

-But, I mentioned a couple of levels of wrongness in their divorce of their wives for unbelieving wives, and this other level is that God doesn’t want you to marry an unbeliever because they will lead you astray. That’s why in v. 11 it emphasizes that they married daughters of foreign gods. These unbelieving spouses led their believing spouses into idolatry. For them, they would join their spouses at the temple of the foreign gods and join in worship. Look what happened to King Solomon—that’s the reason Israel split into two kingdoms, because of his idolatry that his pagan wives led him to.

-While unbelieving spouses in our day and age might not lead you to a pagan temple, they will stifle your growth and walk with God. They will turn your heart from an unhindered devotion to Jesus Christ. That is why Paul said:

2 Corinthians 6:14–18 ESV

14 Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. For what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness? Or what fellowship has light with darkness? 15 What accord has Christ with Belial? Or what portion does a believer share with an unbeliever? 16 What agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God; as God said, “I will make my dwelling among them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. 17 Therefore go out from their midst, and be separate from them, says the Lord, and touch no unclean thing; then I will welcome you, 18 and I will be a father to you, and you shall be sons and daughters to me, says the Lord Almighty.”

-A yoke was the wooden piece between two oxen to pull the plow or whatever. Wherever one ox went, so went the other. Paul says that we Christians are to be different than the rest of the world, but if we are yoked with someone who is worldly, they are going to pull us away from God and toward the ways of the world. We are to go out from their midst. The commitment in the marriage covenant is a whole lot more difficult if you don’t share the covenant of God in Christ.

-I read about a couple who started off with a very rocky marriage, and I mean that quite literally. Robert Berden and his bride, Frances Frei, were married to one another in a ceremony on top of the Rock of Gibraltar, in St. Michael’s Cave. Berden said, “We chose the site because we wanted to found our marriage on a rock.”

-Well, if you want a marriage that is truly covenantal, then you both ought to be believers in Jesus Christ, and remain faithful in all your covenants. Jesus Christ is the beginning and end of our covenant with God, and He is the rock for the covenantal relationships that we hold either with other believers or with our own spouses.

Conclusion

-I pray that by the power of God’s Holy Spirit we remain faithful in the relationships that we have with others through covenant. But we have a great promise:

2 Timothy 2:13 NET 2nd ed.

13 If we are unfaithful, he remains faithful, since he cannot deny himself.

-When we are faithless, we can cling to the truth

1 John 1:9 NET 2nd ed.

9 But if we confess our sins, he is faithful and righteous, forgiving us our sins and cleansing us from all unrighteousness.

-Our faithlessness does not have to have the final say. We can restore fellowship with God and others through Christ.

-Christian, come to the altar and consider your covenant relationship with others and seek forgiveness where needed.

-But if you are not in covenant with God, it only comes by faith in Jesus...