One of the many wonderful characteristics of God is his faithfulness. He is totally trustworthy, unwaveringly reliable, infallibly dependable, and completely incorruptible. So, it shouldn’t surprise that he expects his people to be faithful as he is faithful, to value fidelity as he values fidelity.
Unfortunately, during the days of Malachi’s prophetic ministry, Israel had developed a pattern of unfaithfulness. They’d started minimizing God’s covenants—the ultimate proofs of his trustworthiness—saying, “God didn’t really mean all that he said.” This serpentine posture allowed them to then ignore their covenant responsibilities. “If God’s not obligated to his word, then we aren’t to ours either.” And this lax loyalty, this playing fast-and-loose with promises, offended God, hurt people, and squandered unity. May God help his people learn from the mistakes of generations past and, thus, enjoy the unity he creates and offers.
SERMON MANUSCRIPT
One of the many wonderful characteristics of the God we serve is his faithfulness. When he says he’s going to do something, he will do that thing. He is totally trustworthy, unwaveringly reliable, infallibly dependable, and completely incorruptible.
This caused Moses to sing of “a God of faithfulness … righteous and upright is he” (Deut 32:4). Solomon harmonized: “His compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness” (Lam 3:22–23). The NT authors join the choir: “Faithful is he who calls you” (1 Thes 5:24), “he who promised is faithful” (Heb 10:23), for even “If we are faithless, he remains faithful, for he cannot deny himself” (2 Tim 2:13).
And we often lift our voices to the same truth: “Great is Thy faithfulness, O God my Father / There is no shadow of turning with Thee / Thou changest not, Thy compassions they fail not / As Thou hast been, Thou forever wilt be.”
God is faithful. Amen? Amen. So, it shouldn’t surprise that he expects his people to be faithful, to value fidelity as he values fidelity. In fact, “It is required of [servants of Christ] that one be found faithful” (1 Cor 4:2 esv). And “the fruit of the Spirit [that which God cultivates in the hearts of his servants] is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control” (Gal 5:22–23). God’s people are to be faithful as God himself is faithful.
Unfortunately, during the days of Malachi’s prophetic ministry, Israel had developed a pattern of unfaithfulness. They’d started minimizing God’s covenants—the ultimate proofs of his trustworthiness. “God didn’t really mean all that he said.” This serpentine posture allowed them to then ignore their covenant responsibilities. “If God’s not obligated to his word, then we aren’t to ours either.” And in today’s passage, we find that this lax loyalty, this playing fast-and-loose with promises, offended God, hurt people, and squandered unity.
ISRAEL’S UNFAITHFULNESS
Israel’s unfaithfulness, front and centre. Five times God says they’ve behaved “treacherously.” They had betrayed confidence. They had gone back on their word. They had acted deceitfully. They had violated the terms of two covenants into which they’d voluntarily entered: the Mosaic covenant or, as it’s called in verse 10, “the covenant of our fathers,” and the marriage covenant (2:14): “your companion and wife by covenant.” The first was entered and enjoyed by the nation. The second is entered and enjoyed by a man and woman.
Now, to understand Israel’s unfaithfulness, we need to see that one of the main purposes of these covenants, like all covenants, was to create unity. With the Mosaic covenant, God gave a crowd of former slaves a shared law, shared priesthood, and shared Monarch. Malachi highlights this supernatural unity in verse 10: “Do we not all have one father?” Israel, as a whole, was like God’s beloved and protected child.
And “Has not one God created us?” Not “us” as individuals but “us” as a people. God promised Abram, “I will make you a great nation” (Gen 12:2) and, at Mount Sinai, using covenantal superglue, God kept that promise. By God’s grace, Israel entered and enjoyed unity of origin, unity of purpose, and unity of hope. The Mosaic covenant created unity.
So does the marriage covenant. “A man … [is] joined to his wife; and they shall become one flesh” (Gen 2:25). Malachi, speaking to the men of Israel, says “the wife of your youth … [is] your companion” (2:14). The marriage covenant creates unity.
But herein lays Israel’s unfaithfulness: they were causing disunity.[2:10–11] Israel had willingly entered these unity-bringing covenants and, then, once in them, violated them. In the presence of the God who loves holiness, they loved unholiness. They married themselves to false gods, idols, and flaunted their adultery in God’s face. God brought them into harmony with himself, they cheated on him without shame. God was faithful to hold up his end of the Mosaic covenant. Israel was not.
They also “dealt treacherously each against his brother” (1:10), fellow Israelites with whom they were joined. They broke their shared law, shirked their shared rituals, spat on their shared future.
And it was no better in the marriage covenant. Verse 14: “the Lord has been a witness between you and the wife of your youth, against whom you have dealt treacherously.” It seems the men of Israel were divorcing their wives, sending them away, for convenience- and preference-sake. They casually ripped apart the one flesh God created and witnessed. They abused the companion God had given them. Disloyalty. Treachery. Unfaithfulness.
When we ignore, altar, or add to the terms of the covenants God has given to us, unifying covenants into which we might enter willingly, we are likewise unfaithful.
The marriage covenant hasn’t changed. And it doesn’t matter if you’re married or not, if we do not consider that union the way its Author considers that union, we are unfaithful. If we join our culture in redefining something we didn’t create, we are attacking unity, even if we think we’re preserving it, extending it, or sharing it. Adultery, neglect, abuse, pornography are all treachery, attacks on the covenant God created, witnessed, and oversees.
And, while we’re not under the Mosaic covenant, we do have the New Covenant in Christ’s blood, that which unites the believer eternally with Christ and with other believers. But when we dabble in the philosophies of this world, obsessed with novelty, and impressed with variety, we are unfaithful. When we constantly question our position in Christ, ignore his invitation to intimacy, and habitually walk in the sin from which we’ve been freed we are assaulting the unity we’ve been given.
When we come to the Table of the Lord, remembering the body of Christ given for us all and the blood that washes us all, celebrating the unity we have in the atoning work of our Lord but, at the same time, harbour bitterness in our heart toward another believer or malice and insubordination toward a leader we challenge the unifying covenant into which we’ve willingly entered by faith.
We need to be careful. When we ignore the terms, we’re no longer mirroring God’s faithfulness but Israel’s unfaithfulness. We’re acting treacherously.
GOD’S DISPLEASURE
Not surprisingly, such unfaithfulness attracts God’s displeasure. Go figure: the God of unity dislikes those who tear it down. The God of faithfulness hates unfaithfulness.
We see God’s displeasure in Malachi 2. Israel had not only disobeyed the Mosaic Law but had “profaned the covenant of our fathers” (2:10). Judah “profaned the sanctuary of the Lord which he loves” (2:11). They’d defiled it, offended it, spoiled it. To cause disunity with God’s unity is, to him, profanity. God was displeased with Israel’s unfaithfulness to the Mosaic covenant.
Likewise to the marriage covenant. Speaking of the man who dealt treacherously with “the wife of [his] youth,” Malachi says, [2:15a]. They’re behaviour is opposite to their faithful God and out of step with the Spirit of God. [2:15b] Godly children, a privilege and command to a people looking for the birth of the promised seed, could only come from godly marriages, like those which were being thrown out by these unfaithful, unspiritual, ungodly men. This displeases God.
And he says so: [2:16]. This is referring to the calloused “sending away” of a wife like these men were doing. God says, “Don’t do that. Why? Because I hate it. If you continue to act like this, it’s like you’re wrapping yourself in clothing dripping with ‘wrong’ when I want to wrap you in my holiness. Your treachery, your unfaithfulness, it displeases me.”
And it displeases God when you and I are unfaithful, when we play fast-and-loose with his covenantal unity. When we downplay, scoff at, marginalize, or secularize our view of the marriage covenant, it displeases God the Father and his Son who is our soon returning Groom. The casual, self-centred, feelings-driven, preference-guided, always potentially temporary view of marriage that our world “enjoys,” is hated by the one who authored it.
When we confuse grace with works and start striving to keep or prove our New Covenant participation, it’s profanity to his holy ears. When we forget that we’ve been given a new heart and that we are no longer slaves to sin but slaves to Christ, it displeases the one who died for us. When we sing together, pray together, break bread together, and then deal treacherously with one another, we wrap ourselves in clothing of wrong, of rebellion, of sedition.
Now, for hard-hearted or immature people, God’s displeasure isn’t very motivating. Like a child, learning they’ve disappointed their parents by behaving inconsistent with how they were raised, says, “I don’t care,” and keeps going.
SIN’S CONSEQUENCES
But we’re not those people, are we? We do care if our Lord, our Saviour, our God is displeased with us. Of course we do. But, just in case we need a bit more motivation to strive for faithfulness, there are consequences for unfaithfulness.
And the consequences are really that we get what we were sinfully looking for: disunity. [2:12] To any Israelite who fights against the unifying terms of the Mosaic covenant, the Lord may give them what they seek. They want freedom from this unity? Cut them off from the community. They can have the disunity they seem to desire. They can live outside the safety of the covenant and the covenant people.
And while there is disunity with God’s people, there is also disunity with God himself. [2:13–14] They are boo-hooing because, in their rebellion, God won’t accept their offerings. “That’s right! You get what you wanted. You want freedom from the unity I’ve given? Here you go. Those are sin’s consequences—you may get what you so desire: disunity, separation, strained worship, lack of protection.”
If we mistreat the marriage covenant, we may just get the “freedom” our flesh desires. There will be disunity, division, stifled sanctification, muted joy. There may be generation consequences and pain.
If we abuse or take for granted the New Covenant, wanting freedom from the expectations of God, freedom from his involvement in our lives, we may just get that as we grieve the Spirit, quench the Spirit, hinder our prayers and harm our fellowship.
When God’s people play fast-and-loose with his unity-creating covenants, when we are unfaithful and treacherous, it displeases God and brings consequences.
This makes me think of a farmyard surrounded by a barbed wire fence to keep the cattle from wandering onto the busy grid roads that surround the land. They’re a herd because of the farmer, his borders, and his care but these animals keep knocking themselves against the fence, hurting themselves, leaving scars, and grieving their owner. They’re relentless in their longing to escape. So, one day the owner, filled with frustration and disappointment, says, “Have it your way,” and opens the fence. The animals cheer, “We’ve done it! We’re free! We knew the boundaries weren’t necessary! That farmer is just mean, stifling, and controlling!” The herd spreads out, away from safety, away from provision, away from protection. They get eaten by animals and hit by grain trucks. I guess the unity of the farmyard wasn’t that bad after all.
The opening verse of this book says, [1:1]. That word, oracle, can also be translated burden, which is appropriate when you consider its contents. They’re heavy and commanding, severe and urgent. But I pray, with God’s help, we also find them corrective and life-giving, gracious and loving. God has invited us as his people to resolve ourselves to do what we ought so as to thrive as he wants. Be it resolved: we will not doubt God’s love. Be it resolved: we will give God what he deserves. And, from today’s text, be it resolved: we will cherish covenantal unity.
Josiah has served the Oakridge Bible Chapel family as one of its elders and one of its pastoral staff members since September 2018, before which he ministered as an associate pastor to a local congregation in the Canadian prairies. Josiah's desire is to be used by God to help equip the church for ministry, both while gathered (edification) and while scattered (evangelization). He is married to Patricia, and together they have five children—Jonah, Henry, Nathaniel, Josephine, and Benjamin.
- Josiah Boydhttps://oakridgebiblechapel.org/author/josiah-boyd/
- Josiah Boydhttps://oakridgebiblechapel.org/author/josiah-boyd/
- Josiah Boydhttps://oakridgebiblechapel.org/author/josiah-boyd/
- Josiah Boydhttps://oakridgebiblechapel.org/author/josiah-boyd/