Marriage, Faithfulness and Divorce - Part 1
Malachi 2v10
5th March 2021
Malachi 2v10-16 is a well-known passage which teaches about divorce, but it's really about faithfulness in the context of marriage. Verse 10 talks about faithfulness to God's people. Verses 11 and 12 talk about choosing a marriage partner, and verses 13-16 talk about faithfulness to our marriage partner. We'll look at these sections in turn over three weeks.
This week's study is not controversial, dealing in general terms with the principle of faithfulness to God's people, but the next two sections are very difficult in our culture. One speaks about marrying somebody outside God's people, and the other speaks about divorce.
The passage begins:
Malachi 2v10
Do we not all have one Father? Did not one God create us? Why do we profane the
covenant of our fathers by breaking faith with one another?
Malachi is prophesying to God's Old Covenant people, reminding them that they all have one Father. It's not clear if He means God or Abraham here but, either way, it's true that they all have the same father. They were all created by God, as were we all. More than that, though, the nation of Israel was created by God, who chose Abraham and made a Covenant with him to make his descendants a people for God's possession.
All this applies equally to us. All Christians have one Father. We pray to "Our Father who art in heaven" Matthew 6v9). We don't pray to "my Father" but to "our Father". And we all have Abraham for our father:
Galatians 3:29
If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the
promise.
We all have one Creator – God, who has made us His chosen people. We're all saved under the New Covenant. The knowledge of the covenant that saves us has been passed down to us from the first generation of Christians. We are one chosen people, one royal priesthood, one holy nation (1 Peter 2:9). We're family. We should be faithful to each other, and to God. There must be no divisions between us.
Galatians 3:26-28
So in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith,
for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.
There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and
female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.
That's not saying these categories of people don't exist. It's saying that there should be no division, no contention, between them. We're all one.
God is faithful, and He speaks through Malachi to tell us how much he hates it when we're unfaithful to Him, to His people, or to our marriage partner. Faithfulness is a fruit of the Holy Spirit (Galatians 5v22). How can we expect God to be faithful to us if we won't be faithful to each other?
The next verse says:
Malachi 2:11
Judah has broken faith. A detestable thing has been committed in Israel and in
Jerusalem: Judah has desecrated the sanctuary the Lord loves by marrying the
daughter of a foreign god.
We'll look at that next time.