Malachi 2:10-16 - Rejecting the Nearest Neighbor

Intro

Review Malachi: Israel thinks that they are “okay” but God is trying to prove to them otherwise. Like a medical doctor he is raising their awareness to spiritual illnesses that they are blind to.

Israel’s False Trust in Why God Loves Them (1:1-5)

Israel’s False Trust in their Worship (1:6-14)

Israel’s False Trust in their Worship Leaders (2:1-9)

Now, Israel’s false trust in their love to others (2:10-16)

Sometimes it is hard to gauge your relationship with God.

Our relationship with God is very real, thriving, dynamic, and present.

However, God is still a spiritual being and there is a form of separation from Him on this earth. Sometimes we can be blind to our state with God.

So since the beginning of creation, God has manifested a way in which we can examine the present state of our relationship in the physical world.

It is in something that the Scriptures calls, “your neighbor.”

“Your neighbor” does not just refer to your next door inhabitant. It refers to any person you share earth with. It refers to your friends, siblings, parents, and one day spouses.

Mark 12:30–31 ESV

And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”

James 2:14–17 ESV

What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him? If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and filled,” without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that? So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.

The rich young ruler asked “who is my neighbor?” (Luke 10:29)

Jesus follows up with the story of the good samaritan, proving that loving your neighbor means making sacrificial choices to lower yourself below an enemy. A neighbor is any person, even those who hate you.

Why is this so important?

Mankind is Designed for Relationship.

“It is not good that man should be alone”

Genesis 2:18 ESV

Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.”

Mankind did not possess the full capacity to reflect the image of God as individuals.

This is because God does not exist in singularity, he exists in plurality

“Let US make man in OUR image.”

Genesis 1:26 ESV

Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”

Mankind’s Relationships Directly Affect Their Relationship with God.

Malachi turns to the most extreme toleration of broken relationships: Divorce

Israel grew to not only permit all forms of divorce, but have a light view of it.

They took marriage, a concept God designed to be inherently self sacrificial and outwardly focused to turn inward and be absorbed with self. While marriage brings many joys and those are joys to delight in, you will always be unhappy in relationships if you believe those relationships exist to make you happy.

The Christian is supposed to love his neighbor, and since his wife is his nearest neighbor, she should be his deepest love. - Martin Luther

These husbands had divorced their wives because they had found something “better.” Maybe their wife was getting annoying, getting naggy, and maybe they just didn’t feel that same spark.

You do not have a spouse, but all of you have friends. They may not be the nearest neighbor that this passage deals with, but they are a neighbor.

The heart issue of these husbands was that they approached marriage as what they could get out of it instead of what they could give to it.

They were not satisfied in God, which means they were not satisfied in their relationship.

Conflict by nature isn’t always sinful. But if there is a conflict where there is part up to you to resolve (like forgiving or seeking forgiveness), then that conflict must be repented of and dealt with urgently.

Four Ways That Unrepentant Conflict Affects Your Relationship with God

1. It Hurts God’s Family (v. 10)

Do we not all have he same father?

Compare to “Is not Jacob Esau’s brother?”

Instead of physical heritage, now it is spiritual heritage

If we are family, then why do we betray each other as if we are not?

Profaned the covenant:

God gave Israel the Old Covenant at Sinai: Love God and Love people

Our New Covenant has the same command

1 John 2:7–10 ESV

Beloved, I am writing you no new commandment, but an old commandment that you had from the beginning. The old commandment is the word that you have heard. At the same time, it is a new commandment that I am writing to you, which is true in him and in you, because the darkness is passing away and the true light is already shining. Whoever says he is in the light and hates his brother is still in darkness. Whoever loves his brother abides in the light, and in him there is no cause for stumbling.

In conflict, we lose sight of one thing: the person we are in conflict no longer becomes a brother or sister in God’s image. They become an enemy.

We share spiritual heritage with those who are part of the same covenant with God. To leave conflict unresolved

2. It Profanes God’s Worship (vv. 11-12)

Judah’s sin profanes God’s sanctuary. These are people that claim in their words that they are committed to God, but

Malachi asks a request of God: please cut off or take away these people who make God look bad in their worship by sinning.

This is not a wrong thing to pray. It is better that those people live in honesty with themselves, avoiding God, rather than pretending to follow him and drag his name into the mud with them.

Conflict must be dealt with before we worship. If you leave an unrepentant conflict unresolved, your heart will not be able to focus on God.

Matthew 5:21–25 ESV

“You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not murder; and whoever murders will be liable to judgment.’ But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, ‘You fool!’ will be liable to the hell of fire. So if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift. Come to terms quickly with your accuser while you are going with him to court, lest your accuser hand you over to the judge, and the judge to the guard, and you be put in prison.

3. It Grieves God’s Spirit (vv. 13-14)

God refuses to receive the worship of someone who is unrepentant.

1 Peter 3:7 ESV

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, so that your prayers may not be hindered.

Peter warns husbands that a unresolved relationship with your spouse directly affects and even hinders your prayers to God.

I remember one morning during my first year of teaching that me and my wife had a conflict that we couldn’t resolve in that moment. The strange thing, I could not teach during the next period. I felt like I lost my touch. I remember Mr. Weber being honest about that.

What’s the issue? They were divorcing their wives.

Matthew 5:31–32 ESV

“It was also said, ‘Whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce.’ But I say to you that everyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of sexual immorality, makes her commit adultery, and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.

God says something really interesting: he says marriage is a covenant.

Covenant is a bond in blood between two individuals with severe consequences for failure to keep each end.

This is the only place in scripture where Marriage is called a covenant.

It’s implied by a ton of other verses, but this is the only deliberate place.

The issue was that the men approached relationships in a light sense, not knowing the spiritual seriousness of what they were committing to.

God describes himself as a witness, showing how grieved he is when the two were torn apart.

(Fireproof illustration with salt and pepper).

4. It Rejects God’s Design (vv. 15-16)

Malachi implies something really interesting. The bond in marriage is not just physical, it is spiritual. What does that mean? I’m not fully sure, beyond the point that he makes when he says that breaking a marriage has more than physical consequences.

Matthew 19:4–9 ESV

He answered, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.” They said to him, “Why then did Moses command one to give a certificate of divorce and to send her away?” He said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so. And I say to you: whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery.”

Their spiritual unity reflects the trinity’s spiritual unity.

The marriage unity directly pours into children.

Godly Offspring = God’s image being magnified.

A failure in the marriage leads to a failure in the mission under the marriage.

Genesis 1:28 ESV

And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”

Many divorces happen because the parents claim to be prioritizing children first. The reality is, God wants you to prioritize the marriage more than children because the children are under the marriage.

“Covers his garment with violence = Literally “chooses violence” and makes God his enemy.

“Guard yourselves” is the repeated phrase. The point? This unfaithfulness to others begins in the heart.

Job 31:1–2 ESV

“I have made a covenant with my eyes; how then could I gaze at a virgin? What would be my portion from God above and my heritage from the Almighty on high?

Conclusion

Christ is the ultimate loving husband to us. When someone angers you, remember Christ’s patience with you. He knows the depths of your sin way more than you know the other persons. If he can be patient and forgiving with you, you can be patient and forgiving with them. Christ was the perfect and faithful husband to you. You can be faithful to your future spouse, and even to your present friends by looking at Him.

Ephesians 5:25–26 ESV

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,

Go, and be reconciled.