Malachi 2:10 Covenantal Faithfulness
The text speaks of three covenant relationships: with the Savoir, with the saints and with a spouse. It addresses the unfaithfulness of the people toward their covenant with God, with Israel and in their marriage. The problem is their discontentment with God which led to a discontentment in relationships. If we don’t love the Lord, we won’t love others. (Matt 22:37-40) (Ferguson) Piper suggest that in this passage we must learn to strengthen our spiritual ability to resist three temptations: the temptation to break a trust in your relationships, the temptation to marry an unbeliever, and the temptation to divorce your spouse.
Biblical relationships are built and sustained by our eternal covenant with the father through Jesus. Hebrew for covenant is berit. It means to “cut a covenant” coming from the practice of cutting animals in two as part of the covenant ritual (Gen 15:9-11). The word originates from a word meaning to bind. So, a covenant is a binding unbreakable agreement between two parties (Miller). (Joshua 9:1-21, 2 Sam 21:1-9). When we come to Christ we enter into a “new covenant” instituted through his blood, symbolizing his being the perfect sacrifice which was “cut” for our sins. As a result of our covenant relationship with Jesus we are in a covenant relationship with other believers. Marriage is a covenant that illustrates our covenant with Christ. So when we are unfaithful to Jesus, unfaithful toward fellow believers and unfaithful to our spouse, we have broken our covenant with Christ and them. If someone breeches the covenant that they have with God they will breech all other covenants. (Ferguson).
Covenantal Faithfulness with your Savior
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! v. 16 So guard yourselves in your spirit, and do not be faithless." God’s covenant people acted faithlessly toward Him by entering into an idolatrous relationship through marriage with women who worshiped false gods. In doing this, they broke the covenant instituted in the wilderness (Ex 19:3-8) and violated his commands (Ex 20:1-6). God is holy. He has made his people holy and wants them to remain holy (Lev 11:45). To be holy means to be wholly devoted to God, to share God’s values, to obey God’s will, to trust God’s promises, to keep God’s covenant, to live to the glory of God. To be holy is not neutral; it is to be transformed by God and to be committed to God. Foreigners could be included in the nation, without polluting it, as long as men were circumcised and worshipped and served the true and living God (Adam). Believers are not to date or marry unbelievers (Ex 34:11-16, Duet 7:3, 1 Cor 7:39, 2 Cor 6:14-15). To marry a non-believer is an act of compromising one’s faith and breaking God’s covenant. Doing this contaminates the holiness of God’s sanctuary (temple) and cuts off one from the community. . . . when we claim to love God with all our heart and soul and mind and strength, and then willfully choose to unite ourselves with an unbeliever in the most intimate personal union on earth, we profane the holiness of God. We actas though our emotional drive for human intimacy is more important than affirming the preciousness of God's holiness and nearness. (Piper) To profane is to treat as common what God calls Holy. To desecrate what God has made holy is to desecrate the holiness of God (Adam). . . .if the choice of marriage partner still lies before you, settle it in your mind right now never to marry anyone that does not love the Lord Jesus with all his or her heart. (Piper). So the admonition is to guard ourselves from rash decisions and wrong relationships that would dishonor and defile the pure and holy covenant that we have with God. You are God’s temple (1 Cor 3:16, 6:15-20), so do not “profane” his sanctuary by entering into a dating encounter or marriage covenant with someone who is not godly. If the hottie is not holy don’t date the hottie.
Covenantal Faithfulness with the Saints
10 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? The will of God for his people is plain from this verse. He wills that we not be faithless to each other When we are not faithful to one another the disorder of self-indulgence arises. . . . the spirit of commitment-making and commitment-keeping has been replaced by a spirit of emotional and physical impulse. The moral fabric of faithfulness to covenants and promises and contracts is unraveled and what's left are the individual strands of private gratification. (Piper) Three Reasons Not to Be Faithless to One Another: 1) We have one Father: (v. 10). . . . when we betray a trust, we betray the family of God. We deceive our own flesh and we dishonor our Father. 2) We have one Creator (v. 10). If I am faithless to you, and break my commitment to you, I act as though you and I are accountable to two different Creators. I act as though my Creator lets me function on one set of terms—like self-indulgence that ignores my commitment to you—while I expect your Creator to hold you to another set of terms—like respect for my rights and stay off my case. But if we are both utterly dependent upon and accountable to one and the same Creator, that double standard will not do. 3) We profane the covenant of our fathers. (v10) The covenant was God's commitment to be Abraham's God, to work for him and bless him and give him life and hope—and not only him but all his true offspring, including you and me in Jesus Christ the seed of Abraham. In other words whenever you or I lie or fudge on our duties, or betray a trust, we act as though God is not able to take care of us and protect us and give us a fulfilling life if we keep our commitments. And when we act as though God cannot or will not give us what is best for us on the path of faithfulness, we profane his covenant. We act as though it is untrustworthy and worthless. (Piper).
Covenantal Faithfulness with your Spouse 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. In Marriage the couple enters into a covenant of God. The Holy Spirit empowers and enables them to love one another with God’s love, to forgive one another with God’s forgiveness, to take the work of Jesus and apply it to one another and their relationship with one another. Marriage is not what the culture thinks that it is. It’s sexual, but just sleeping with somebody doesn’t make you married. It’s relational; Just being friends with somebody is important, but that doesn’t make you married. It’s also spiritual: God knits your souls together, and the Holy Spirit is in and through both of you. And it’s all of that. Covenantal marriage is sexual, it’s relational, and it’s spiritual. Like every covenant, it requires both parties to be faithful. The husband and the wife are to be faithful to one another, and God is faithful to both of them. And when God is faithful to them and they are unfaithful to one another, then God gets involved as the overseer of the covenant and he addresses how the covenant has been breached and broken. (Driscoll).
Purpose of Marriage:
Portray Covenant v. 14 your wife by covenant v. 15 Did he not make them one, with a portion of the Spirit in their union? (Gen 2:24, Matt 19:6 one flesh, Matt 19:6 joined together) Marriage is a earthly unbreakable unconditional covenant bond between a man and a women. It represents the eternal unbreakable unconditional covenant bond that Christ has with the church, the bride with his bridegroom (Eph 5:32). Our temporal earthly covenants (parent to child, husband to wife) should illustrate our eternal heavenly covenant. Marriage is mating for life (Matt 19:6). The life together is rooted not in the sand of emotional satisfaction but in the rock of covenant commitment. (Piper)
Provide a Companion v. 14 she is your companion God originally designed marriage to dispel loneliness (Gen 2:18) and to provide a helpmate, a companion, to do life with (Gen 2:20). Marriage is about companionship.
Produce Children 15 And what was the one God seeking? Godly offspring God’s plan was to produce a great nation from the descendants of Abraham, and that within the tribes and families, parents would teach their children the Law of Moses, show them how to put it into practice and teach them the fear of the Lord as the foundation of all wisdom (Gen 12:1-3, Ex 12:21-27, Duet 6:4-9). By marrying foreigners, Israelite men might be seduced away from the worship of the Lord as the one true and only God. Their new wives would not be able to teach the children to worship the Lord. The men would have divided hearts, and be less able to teach their children the truth. (Adam). God still wants us to produce godly offspring in the new covenant marriage that we have in Christ. As believers, we produce godly offspring as we proclaim the gospel and those who come to faith are born again as children into the family of God.
Procurer of Marriage 14 Because the LORD was witness between you and the wife of your youth, Marriage is from God and before God (Matt 19:6 what God has joined together). It was God’s idea to bring the women to the man (Gen 2:22), to have them begin a new life together leaving and cleaving to each other (Gen 2:24) and glorifying him as a couple. And when God stands as witness to the covenant promises of a marriage, it becomes more than a merely human agreement. God is not a passive bystander at a wedding ceremony. In effect he says, I have seen this, I confirm it, and I record it in heaven. And I bestow upon this covenant by my presence and my purpose the dignity of being an image of my own covenant with my wife, the church. (Piper).
Perversion of Marriage 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 (v. 16 NASV, reads "For I hate divorce," says the LORD, the God of Israel, NKJV reads For the Lord God of Israel says That He hates divorce). The men of Israel were divorcing the wives of their youth to marry pagan women (v11). God alone dissolves marriages through the death of a spouse (Matt 19:6 let no man separate, 8 it was not so from the beginning). Life and death are in his hands. God sees divorce as a violation of the marital covenant and is a treacherous or faithless act toward ones spouse. The Hebrew term bagad means to act or deal treacherously, faithlessly. It comes from the noun for “garment” and came to refer to acts that were improper within the community, such as stealing a garment, cheating, swindling, and defrauding. All of these acts were called “begeding” or “garmenting” (Smith). In marriage the garment is a figurative expression of obtaining a wife, which is sometimes done by covering her with one’s garment (Duet 22:30, Ruth 3:9, Ezek 16:8). To be faithless in marriage is to “cover the garment with violence”. What was to be a beautiful expression of devotion and intimacy turns into distain and dejection. Divorce, for whatever reason, violates the covenant in marriage and distorts the beautiful portrait of the unbreakable eternal covenant we have with Christ who loved us and gave himself for us (Eph 5:25-26). The reason that divorce has kindled God's wrath is that marriage is a covenant. (Piper) Divorce (as with some types of dating and remarriage Matt 19:9, Rom 7:1-3) portrays that, as with a man and a women, our redemptive covenant with God can be broken. . . . . the root reason why God hates divorce is that it is fundamentally a contradiction of his covenant with his wife, his people. He is the God of Israel. The fellowship may be broken. There may be exile and separation. There may be anger and tears. But when whole story is told, the sum of the matter is: Your Maker is your husband, the Lord of hosts is his name; and the Holy One of Israel is your Redeemer, the God of the whole earth he is called. For the Lord has called you like a wife forsaken and grieved in spirit, like a wife of youth when she is cast off, says your God. For a brief moment I forsook you, but with great compassion I will gather you. In overflowing wrath for a moment I hid my face from you, but with everlasting love I will have compassion on you, says the Lord, your Redeemer. (Isaiah 54:4–8). God will never nullify his marriage to the elect. Christ will never forsake his bride, the church. He is a covenant maker and a covenant keeper. And that is the meaning of marriage. (Piper)