Faithless People, Faithful God

This third of six disputations that Malachi has with Israel about their faithlessness to God’s covenant is close to the center of the book. That’s not an accident. That’s an intentional function of Hebrew argumentation. The center of a book or even of a part of a passage, is often the central point or issue. Close to the heart of Israel’s issue as people who are breaking God’s covenant is their attitude towards marriage and divorce.

That tells us something: marriage and divorce, and more broadly, what we do with our sexuality, matters a lot when it comes to our relationship with God. It matters to God. In this sermon we consider what God’s design for our sexuality is, especially related to marriage and divorce, why this matters, and how we should respond to God’s word.

Sermon Text

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? 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. 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!
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. 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. 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. “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.”