Faithful to My God and My Spouse

First oracle: respond to God’s love

Second oracle: Honor God

Third oracle: Be faithful

Main Idea: To be faithful to God make the main thing the one thing.

- how many times does one appear?

(1) The Theme: Why are we faithless? (2:10)

Malachi 2:10 ESV

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?

One Father - Jesus said to pray our Father,

One God created me

One another - Christian community and the one anothers - be kind, forgive, love

Jesus said the second greatest commandment is to love one another

(2) The 1st Thing: Faithful to God in my social life (2:11-12)

Malachi 2:11–12 ESV

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. 12 May the Lord cut off from the tents of Jacob any descendant of the man who does this, who brings an offering to the Lord of hosts!

married the daughter of a foreign God - dating outside your faith

2 Corinthians 6:14 ESV

Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. For what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness? Or what fellowship has light with darkness?

1 Corinthians 7:39 ESV

A wife is bound to her husband as long as he lives. But if her husband dies, she is free to be married to whom she wishes, only in the Lord.

Ephesians 5:4 ESV

4 Let there be no filthiness nor foolish talk nor crude joking, which are out of place, but instead let there be thanksgiving.

(3) The 2nd Thing: Faithful to God in my marriage (2:13-16)

Malachi 2:13–16 ESV

13 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 favor from your hand. 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. 15 Did he not make them one, with a portion of the Spirit in their union? And what was the one God seeking? Godly offspring. So guard yourselves in your spirit, and let none of you be faithless to the wife of your youth. 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.”

This second thing you do: pretty clear

Why is there no blessing in your personal spiritual life? I do this and I do that but ...

3 ways we can be faithless in our marriage

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.

Matthew 19:3–6 ESV

3 And Pharisees came up to him and tested him by asking, “Is it lawful to divorce one’s wife for any cause?” 4 He answered, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, 5 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’? 6 So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.”

Ephesians 5:25–31 ESV

25 Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, 26 that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, 27 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. 28 In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. 29 For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, 30 because we are members of his body. 31 “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.”

making the main thing the main thing

Salvation: the one thing that changes eternity

Purity: the one thing that changes my future

Spiritual leadership: the one thing that changes my relationships and my marriage

The fruit of the Spirit in my life -

Galatians 5:22–23 ESV

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.