Audio Transcript:

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Good morning. Welcome to Mosaic Church. My name is Jan, one of the pastors here at Mosaic. And if you're new or if you're visiting welcome, we're so glad you're here and we'd love to connect either through the connection card and the worship guide or in the connection card in the app or online. If you filled out allegedly, we will get in touch with you over the course of the week. That said, would you please pray with me over the preaching of God's word?

Heavenly Father, we thank you for the privilege it is to come into your presence because of the sacrifice of your son, Jesus Christ on the cross, by the power of your Holy Spirit. Lord, you command us that we are not to have any gods before you. You summarized Jesus, the law of the Lord by saying, love God with all your heart, soul strength, and mind, love your neighbor as yourself. I pray today. Lord, you show us that love without obedience toward you is not love. When you call us to love you. You call us to honor you and revere you and fear you. And make us the people who care about honoring your name. People who care about holiness and righteousness, people who allow you to be Lord and King over every aspect of our lives. No matter how intimate to us.

I pray. Lord, open up your Holy scriptures to us and give us hearts to hear and to receive and to love these truths. We'll pray, Holy Spirit, fill us, rebuke us, where we need to be rebuked, and comfort us where we need to be comforted. We pray all this in Christ's Holy Name. Amen.

We're continuing our sermon series through the book of Malachi this week, two more weeks, I was just covering chapter by chapter. And then that will lead us into advent and where we'll just look at Matthew:1-2, so the very next pages in the Holy scriptures. Malachi and the title of the sermon series is a refiner's fire. Malachi is a prophet of God. His name means my message, your God has sent this prophet to speak a work of fire to the people of God, to burn off the dross that has encapsulated their hearts. Their hearts are numb toward God, desensitized toward God, and they need a fire to burn that dross off.

And really that the heart of this book, it is the question, do you love God with all your heart, soul strength, and mind? Does God have a central place in your life? Meaning does faith in God permeate all of your life? Does God get to be God over every aspect of your life? Or does he just get a little time slot on your Google calendar of Sundays for an hour, hour and a half, a few minutes at the beginning of each day, perhaps?

Is God the absolute most important person in your life? Do you do everything that you do for the glory of God? Through the prism of worshiping God, boil a question down is, God central or is He supplemental? And many of us struggle with the centrality of God because a lot of us have learned to compartmentalize God. There's my school box. There's my career box. There's my relationship with box. There's my money box. There's my sex box, whatever it is. And then there's my God box. And this is that part of life where I honor God, I sing songs to Him, I pray some prayers and I do some scripture. And when God gets compartmentalized in our lives, He just becomes an afterthought and we run to Him when we need something. When we need a blessing, when we need forgiveness, when we need spiritual cleansing, when we need him to remove shame or guilt, when we need rescue, we run to Him when we sin.

God forgives, Jesus died on the cross for my sins. I've sinned. I see the calamity of my sin. I don't want to deal with the consequences of my sin. Jesus forgive me. And as soon as I'm forgiven, I run back to my sin. And we see the cycle over and over in the Holy Scriptures. He gets our sin, we get forgiveness and we go back to our sin and God gets our leftovers. We actually only go to God, to say, "God, forgive me, deal with the excrement in the filth of my soul in my life." And then we go right back to it. So how does God feel about that cycle? About that tepidness? About that lukewarmness? How does God feel about us bringing our leftovers to him?

Well, today we will find out what God says, actually your worship to me, what you're giving me, it's actually feces, is the word dung. And he says, "I'm going to take the dung that you're bringing me. I'm going to rub your face in it. So you realize that this isn't going to work." So that's the text that we're in today, Malachi 2:1-9 to begin with, and then we'll deal with verses 10 through 16, after that. Malachi 2:1-9. “And now, O priests, this commandment is for you. If you will not listen if you will not take it to heart, to give honor to My name,” says the LORD of hosts, “Then I will send a curse upon you, and I will curse your blessings. Indeed, I have already cursed them, because you do not take it to heart. Behold, I will rebuke your offspring and spread dung on your faces, the dung of your offerings; and you shall be taken away with it. So shall you know that I've sent this command to you? That my covenant with Levi may stand," says the LORD of hosts.

"My covenant with him was one of life and peace. And I gave them to him, it was a covenant fear and he feared me. He stood in owe of my Name. True instruction was in my mouth and no wrong was found on his lips. He walked with me in peace and uprightness, and he turned many from iniquity. For the lips of a priest should guard knowledge. And the people should seek instruction from his mouth for he is the messenger of the LORD of hosts. But you have turned aside from the way, you've caused many to humble by your instruction, you have corrupted the covenant of Levi," says the LORD of hosts. "So I make you despised and abased before all the people inasmuch as you do not keep my ways but show partiality in your instruction.” This is the radium God's Holy inerrant, infallible authoritative word, He writes these eternal truths upon our hearts, three points to frame-Up our time. Verses 1-9. Stop giving God your Paresh, we'll talk about what that means. Two is don't marry pagans, that's verses 10-12. And three, fight for marital faithfulness verses 13-16.

Point one; stop giving God your Paresh. He writes and speaks these words to priests, that's verse one. "And now, O priests, this commandment is for you." In context, talking directly to spiritual leaders in the Old Testament, these were the Levites. In the new Testament, spiritual leaders of the pastors or the elders. And so in context, He's talking about those who are entrusted to teach the people of God, the truths of God, and to not just teach them the instruction, but also show them, model how it's to be done. "Imitate me as I imitate Christ," the Saint Paul says. Life and doctrine go together. 1 Timothy 4:16, "Keep a close watch on yourself and on the teaching, Persist in this, for by so doing you will save both yourself and your hearers." So if you are to teach the word of God to others, if you're going to instruct people from the word of God, you first have to pay attention to yourself, make sure you're living it yourself, and pay attention to your teaching. That's in line with the teachings of scriptures. In James 3:1, says, "Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers for you know, that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness." God sets a higher standard for those who preach his word, who teach his word. The job of spiritual leaders wasn't just to do the work of the ministry. It was to teach God's word. It was to ordain the worship service, that's the word of God. "We commit ourselves to the word of God and to prayer," as the book of Acts says. And then also it's to keep people accountable to that teaching and equip the saints for the work of the ministry. How does this apply to us? This text primarily applies to spiritual leaders. So Pastor Jan, you're preaching to yourself, Pastor Jane, Pastor Andy, the spiritual leaders. Also, applies to community group leaders. If you're leading a community group in the church, you need to know that this text's for you.

But it also applies to any Christian because any Christian is called to make disciples of other people. Jesus gave us the command in the great commission, "Go make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the Name of the Father, Son, the Holy Spirit." On top of that, every Christian is called a priest. 1 Timothy 2:9 "But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness and into his marvelous light." So in the church age, Jesus Christ has fulfilled the Levitical code and superseded it. He's our great high priest and we are priests under him. So there's levels of authority given Jesus at the very top, then the spiritual leaders in the church. And it just descends, but every single one of us in some capacity, are called to teach the word of God to those in our community. And as we do, we need to know that there are standards that God sets for priests.

Malachi 2:2 "If you will not listen, if you will not take it to heart to give honor to my name," says the LORD of hosts, "then and I will send the curse upon you and I will curse your blessings. Indeed, I've already cursed them because you do not lay it to heart." The first thing that a minister of the gospel, the first thing that any priest, any Christian needs to do is to learn to listen, not just with our ears. Jesus used this phrase often. He says, "Do you have ears to hear, take care of how you listen." And twice in this verse, he emphasizes, "take it to heart." So he's saying not just listen with your ears, but listen with your heart. Not listen to your heart, listen with your heart.

And what's the connection between the heart and listening heart and learning truths? The connection's the same as the connection between faith and love. You can't believe in God or believe in doctrines about God without loving God because faith isn't just a matter of the mind. It's a matter of the heart, even more so. And we have a propensity to listen, in particular, things that we love, things that we want to hear. So he says, "First of all, when you're listening to God's word, you got to make sure your heart is calibrated to hear, to listen, particular, his warnings." Do you heed God's warnings? Do you heed his rebukes in the scripture? When the word is preached, as you read it, do you take the rebukes from the word of God? Do you take them to heart? And if not, then maybe the real issue is that you do not fear God, you do not honor God. And that's the connection. "If you will not take it to heart to give honor to my name."

The scripture talks often about loving God and we in the American Church, we've done a great job talking about a God who is love and a God who calls us to love him because He first loved us. I think we've done that at the expense of talking about God, who is to be feared, who is an awesome God, a God who is to be revered and honored. He is to be so honored. So feared that we even revere his name, that we speak his name with honor with reverence. That's what he's saying here, "Will you give honor to my name?" This is such a big of a deal. This was one of the 10 commandments, "Thou shall not take the Lord's name in vain."

Yes, don't just say, "OMG," don't you just throw out God's name when you're not talking about God or thinking about God, but that's only a surface-level understanding of what that commandment means. What that commandment means is that God has made us his own. We are the children of God. Christ said, "You are mine. I've given you my name, you're Christians live with Christ. So don't take my name in vain, where you take my name, but you dishonor me with your lifestyle." That's what he's really getting at, is that these priests were not honoring God with their lives. And that's really where everything fell apart. They were teaching people about God and then people were looking at their teaching, then comparing it to their lifestyle. And they had nothing to do with God. And thus, they led the people of God astray. So God says, "You're saying, God bless you. God bless you. God bless. But I'm actually going to turn these blessings into curses." And that's the second part of verse 2, "I'm going to curse your blessings. Indeed, I've already done that."

And then in the text, he talks about cursing. The blessings cursing, the Levi's offspring where there'll be cut off from the ministry, and then their ministry will be cursed. What he's saying is you talk about God. You want God to bless your life, but your life has nothing to do with the doctrines of God, the order of God, the tenants, and the laws of God, and God cannot bless what he already promised to curse. Then Malachi 2:3 Behold, words of God. "I will rebuke your offspring, the offspring of the priests, and spread dung on your faces, the dung of your offerings and you shall be taken away with it."

And this is the Hebrew word Paresh. And what he's getting at, is what this Paresh means. Excrement, it's bodily waste from these animals that they were supposed to bring as a sacrifice, as an offering, a sin offering to the Lord at the festivals. In Exodus 29:14, it's outlined there where it says, "But the flesh of the bull and its skin and it's dung, you shall burn with fire outside the camp." It is a sin offering. So the job of the priest was to take the animal to the people, brought to the priest, and say, "This is our offering to the Lord, our sin offering." And there was a take the choice parts of the animal and sacrifice to the Lord as a sin offering, a sacrifice for their sin, atonement for a little time. But the inner parts, the intestines, including the excrement, they were supposed to take outside of the temple, outside of the camp.

And there's two indictments here. The first indictment is the priests, were allowing the dung to stay at the temple. And they were bringing that as a sacrifice to the Lord. And the second indictment is, and we read this in chapter one, that they were allowing the people to bring their leftover animals to God, their lame animals, the blemished animals, the blind animals. When God said, "If you're going to bring a sacrifice, it's got to be the best that you have." And what God is saying. He's saying, "Your worship to me is dung, it's excrement, it's feces, that you're presenting your worst to me. I'm going to take this and I'm going to take these feces and smear them in your face because you are making a mockery of the worship. You keep shoving, literally bull Paresh, BS, in my face and asking me to bless it? And I'm about to return the favor." What's he getting at?

He's saying you've learned that there is a way for your sins to be forgiven through the sacrificial system. And you come and you go through the motions of the sacrificial system and the whole sacrificial system was giving as a way of repentance. It was the method of repentance. This is how we're repenting of our sins. You're doing this, you're going through the motions. And then you're going back to your sins. Meaning you love something more than God. You want God just to forgive you so they can keep on doing the sin. And this cycle of sin, ask for forgiveness, sin, ask for forgiveness. And what happens ... on the outside, you're presenting this religion to me on the inside there's nothing but death and corruption and Paresh. And this is the thing that Jesus Christ stood against more than anything else, warned against more than anything else. He has all of his woes in the gospel in Matthew. Woe against the hypocrites. Why did he talk about that so often? He says, be careful in presenting this front of facade of religiosity and cleanliness and purity and caring, nothing about purity on the inside."

And that's why he gives us this very vivid imagery expressing the revulsion that the Lord felt when he saw that these priests were presenting an image of cleanliness, but there was nothing like that on the inside. That's what Jesus talking to the hypocrites. Those who claimed to know God and love God. He said, "You're whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead people's bones and uncleanliness. You clean the outside of the cup and the place, but inside are full of greed and self-indulgence." He says, "Be careful of a worship that has nothing to do with your heart." Be careful of coming to God and singing songs about loving God and giving him lip service. And then when no one's looking, your life looks nothing like what you were singing about. Be careful of the inner corruption.

Now, Malachi 2:4-6 "So shall you know that I've sent this command to you that might covenant with Levi may stand." Levi was the first priest of the Levitical code, says the LORD of hosts. "My covenant with him was one of life and peace. And I gave them to him. It was a covenant fear and he feared me. He stood in owe of my name, true instruction was in his name and no wrong was found on his lips. He walked with me in peace and uprightness. And he turned many from iniquity." Why was Levi's ministry as a priest so successful? Because he feared God, he honored God. He stood in awe of God. He lived according to God's principles. And when no one was watching, and because there was a love for God, a true love for God from the inside. When he taught people, it blessed people and moved people away from iniquity. He turned many away from iniquity.

And the emphasis here is on, "He walked with me." He walks with me is a Hebrew, halacha. Enoch walked with God and he was no more. Noah walked with God. Abraham was told by God, "Walk with me." Jesus Christ, when he comes, the first thing he says to his disciples is, "Follow me, walk with me." This is what it means to be a follower of the Lord. You walk in his ways, you know his ways, you follow him in his ways. That's the only way you can show others how to walk in his ways. He's talking about a lifestyle, a lifestyle of reverence, and obedience and love. And also a lifestyle of hating sin. To fear God means that you hate sin, that you rebuke yourself of your own sin. Proverbs 8:13 "The fear of the Lord is that hatred of evil." To love God is to fear God. And to fear God is to hate evil.

The question that's before every single one of us as believers of the Lord is, do you truly hate evil? Not just the consequences of evil. Do you truly hate evil because you love God because you fear God? And you can't honor and fear God without hating your own sin, rebuking your own sin. You can't be a priest of the Lord without rebuking yourself for your own sin and doing the same to your own brothers and sisters with whom you have covenant community. And this was one of the rebukes of God against Eli. Eli was a great priest in the old Testament. But at the end of his life, God comes and he rebukes him and he says, "You've dishonored me. Why Eli? Because Eli taught people the way of God. And he tried to do the same, but he did not rebuke the closest people to him of their sin. Primarily his sons. He didn't confront their evil.

1 Samuel 2:30 Therefore the Lord, the God of Israel declares: "I promise that your house and the house of your father should go in and out before me forever." But now the Lord declares, "Far be it from me! For those who honor me, I will honor, and those who despise me will be lightly esteemed." He's saying, "Eli, you claim to honor me, but you allowed evil to reside in your own home without doing anything about it." You need to confront evil. You need to speak truth in love and that's exactly what Malachi is doing.

Malachi 2:7 "For the lips of a priest should guard knowledge. And the people should seek instruction from his mouth for he is the messenger of the LORD of hosts." So every priest, every pastor needs to understand that they are nothing but messengers. They're not editors. They're messengers. They get a message from the Lord, from the Holy scriptures, thus saith the Lord. Malachi was messenger, the priest is supposed to be a messenger. We're supposed to be messengers and we have to guard and preserve and store up what this message is, even if people don't want to hear it. And why does Malachi begin with verses 1-9 talking about, do you love God? Do you fear him? Do you honor him? Do you revere his word? Are you a messenger? Because in a little while in the very next text, he gets to the very intimate parts of life where he begins to meddle in people's intimate lives with the word of God and apply it. And at that point, people have a decision. Are we going to repent of our sin? Or are we going to try to kill the messenger?

Martin Luther said this. He said, "Always preach in such a way that if people listening do not come to hate their sin, they will instead hate you." One of my favorite examples of this is Karl Barth, who was a theologian in Germany prior to World War II. When Hitler was fanning the flames of antisemitism, and some of that was going on in Karl Barth's church. And Barth came out and he preached a sermon on John 3:16. John 3:16 "For God so loved the world that he gave his only son that whosoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life." And what he said was, "Jesus Christ was a Jew and Jesus Christ died for the whole world and Jews a part of the world. So we need to stand against any hatred of Jews. We need to love Jews and actually love our neighbor." Many in the congregation got up and discussed. So the Jews killed Jesus and the whole antisemitic ideology.

And they wrote him scathing letters. And one of the biggest donors in the church wrote him a letter, the scathing letter, denouncing the sermon. Barth responded with a single sentence. And he said, "It was in the text." I'm just delivering the mail. This is the Bible. And this is how we as Christians need to judge any church, any sermon. And then this is how we also need to judge our own teaching about God. Are we speaking truth about God? Is it from the text? This is how we evaluate. Because the whole ministry of God, the whole ministry of the church is founded on this.

Act 6:4 "The apostle said we are going to devote ourselves to prayer and the ministry of the word." We're going to devote ourselves to prayer. That's the worship service. That's the ordinance of worship. The worship guide for the anchoring church is called the book of common prayer. It's not just praying to God. It's the whole worship experience of the congregation. And then the word of God, which is the ministry of preaching the word and teaching the word of God. That's what the church depends on. That is our life source, it nourishes and it strengthens. And we need to unabashedly speak the word of God because that's where life is even if our audience doesn't like it. Do we fear God more than men, than people?

And actually, this is what Malachi says in verse eight and nine. This was the problem with the priest. They feared people more than they feared God, "But you have turned aside from the way, you have caused many to stumble by your instruction. You have corrupted the covenant of Levi," says the LORD of hosts. "And so I make you despised and abased before all the people inasmuch as you do not keep my ways but show partiality in your instruction." What's the issue here? The issue is that for a price, the priest told the people whatever they wanted to hear, the ministry of the word was being bought. In this case, the priests were overlooking clear disobedience in the community and the people are offering substandard sacrifice and the priest said, "Oh, that's fine."

Micah spoke against this in chapter three, verse 11, of Micah. Its heads give judgment for a bribe. Its priests teach for a price. Its prophets practice divination for money. Yet they lean on the Lord and say, "Is not the Lord in the midst of us? No disaster shall come upon us." Priests are teaching for a price. I'll teach what you want to hear as long as you keep paying my salary, that's what was going on. And the priests are, "If we demand from people exactly what God demands from the people, the people are going to get offended, they're going to leave. Then we need to make the message a little more palatable. So people show up so that people give so that we have a livelihood." This has always been a temptation in the church.

Samuel Butler in the 17th century wrote a little poem about it. And he says, "What makes all doctrines plain and clear? About 200 pounds a year. And that which was proved true before, prove false again? 200 more. You want to know the truth? Pay me 200 pounds a year. You don't like it. Pay me another 200 pounds a year. That's what was going on. Does any of that go on today? Yeah. Look at the religious landscape of Boston. 99% of churches that have buildings today, that's what they do. They don't preach the gospel, but they have an endowment that allows them to just not preach the gospel. And I knew early on in the ministry, I knew this was the thing. And practically I made a decision, I don't know who gives what to the church. The only person I know that gives any money, how much? Is my wife and I. We know exactly how much we give. And I will preach whatever the truth of the gospel is, no matter what. And this gig doesn't work out. It's okay. I've got crazy painting skills. I'll go paint houses with my dad, no, no big deal.

And you're like, "Okay, that's the pastor's house, how does it apply to us?" Are you willing to stand up for your faith publicly? Are you willing to tell people in your life; colleagues, students, neighbors, roommates, that you love Jesus Christ, that you believe that Jesus Christ died on the cross for your sins. Specific sins, particular sins, sexual sins, lust, pride, whatever, specific sins. Do you believe that God ordained before the foundation of the world people to salvation that God has an order of this is gender? This is marriage. This is what it means to raise a family? Are you willing to stand up and say, "Yes, I am a Christian." Do you fear God more than you fear people? What they said about Jesus, Luke 20:21. So they asked him, "Teacher we know that you speak and teach regularly and show no partiality but truly teach the way of God." We Mosaic we want to do God's work God's way which is all in line with God's word, whatever that word is.

Now, Malachi gets really specific. He set that foundation. "Do we honor God, revere God, do we honor his word? And are we willing to teach it and live it both at the same time?" And he has two prime examples that get really intimate, and where he goes is marriage, marriage, and sexuality. So is point two, don't marry pagans. So he set that foundation in the verses 10 through 12, he says this, "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.

So one of the issues that he gets really particular with, but specifically, the priest started allowing marriage to pagans. And they started even doing it themselves. Why? Because people came to them and said, "How dare you priests tell us whom to marry?" There's my God box. And then there's my marriage box. It's this hermetically sealed compartmentalization that happens when there's a cognitive dissonance where people want the sin and don't want God to intrude. So Malachi comes in and says, "Actually it is God's business whom you marry." If you're a child of God, that's why he starts with, "Have we not one father?" Pure child of God, then God expects obedience and as a father, a loving father, yes, God gets to have a say in whom you marry, the father gets a say in the child's choice of a marriage partner, because God loves you. And what does God say here? "Whom does God want these people to marry? There's basically one condition, it's that they love God, that they're Christians, that they're saved, that the regenerated, that they do not worship as verse 11 says, "A foreign God."

And so the issue here is not racial intermarriage and it's not ethnic intermarriage. And we see a lot of examples of people from other races who came to the people of Israel, Rahab, Ruth, Abigail, but they were converted, they repent of their sins, became believers in the Lord. So the question is spiritual intermarriage, and he uses the word abomination here. This isn't just a little mistake. This isn't just a matter of options. An abomination, a word that's used for idolatry, witchcraft, and sacrificing children. This is a big deal. And we see that this is a problem all throughout the Old Testament, also in the New Testament. And why was this an issue in during this time of the people of God when Malachi came to speak?

Well, because it's been centuries from the time where Moses said, "Do not intermarry with people of other faiths." Centuries have passed. And now at the time of Malachi that people say, that's antiquated. That's regressive. Why does God care whom I marry? No, no, no, my God doesn't do that. It's too restrictive. We shouldn't take it seriously. We shouldn't take it literally. It's inapplicable in the modern-day.

The objection is, well, God doesn't care about whom I marry, he just cares about my heart. Because God cares about your heart. He cares about whom you marry. God demands that we love him with all our heart, soul, strength, and mind. And how can we give our heart that's committed to God fully to a person that doesn't love God fully? If we have a covenant with God, how can we make a covenant with a person that doesn't love God the same? This is a problem all throughout the Old Testament, all throughout the New Testament. It begins with Genesis 6 where Satan's ploy to take down humanity is spiritual intermarriage, and that actually leads to the flood. In Genesis 24, Abraham makes his servant swear, "Please don't let Isaac, my son marry a Canaanite who worships a foreign God." So Isaac marries Rebecca and then they have two kids, Jacob and Esau. Esau marries two unbelieving wives that brought grief to both Isaac and Rebecca. Jacob marries a believer, but his daughter, Dina is involved with Canaanite men. Those men then invite Jacob's other children to intermarry with them.

Jacob's son, Judah marries a Canaanite woman, begins to live like them, and to protect Abraham's descendants so that Jesus could come from this line because God promised to Abraham, God sovereignly takes Joseph out of that land so that he doesn't marry a Canaanite. And that leads to 400 years in Egypt. God then leads them out. In Deuteronomy 7:3-4, God speaks through Moses to the people of God and says, "You shall not intermarry with them, giving your daughters to your sons or taking your daughters for your sons for they would turn away your sons from following me to serve other gods. Then the anger of the Lord will be kindled against you. And he would destroy you quickly."

Why is this such a big deal? Because Satan knows the way that your faith flourishes if you love God. So if he can pull your heart away from God, when you love a person who competes with your affection for the Lord, and that person then pulls you away. And this was really the strategy of Balaam. If you study the false prophet, Balaam is hired by King Balak who was the King of Moab. Balak says, please curse the people of God. There's so many, they're going to take over. Please curse them. He tries multiple occasions, the curse but he can't because God already blessed them. So then Balaam comes up with a plan. He said, "I can't curse them, but get them to intermarry with Moabite women. And that will destroy their faith. And they will destroy their reverence and honor to the Lord."

And we see this ploy by Satan continued. Samson, the strongest man gets taken out through the same tactics. Solomon, his heart gets pulled away from God because of all his wives who worshiped other gods. Ahab with Jezebel, and after captivity, Ezra comes in back to the land with Nehemiah and they see the same thing going on. In the new Testament. Saint Paul says, "Marriage in the Lord. That's the only requirement, that you love the Lord." And 2 Corinthians 6:14-16, "Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. For what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness? Or what fellowship has light with darkness? What accord has Christ with Belial, it's a false idol? And what portion does a believer share with an unbeliever? What agreement has the temple of God with idols for? For we are the temple of the living God.

In 1 Corinthians 7:12-16, Saint Paul tells people who are married to unbelievers, how to continue the relationship. When he says, "Just love them in the Lord. If you're married to an unbeliever, love them in the Lord. Witness to them, reflect Christ to them." But he's not endorsing entering such a marriage, he's giving to those who become believers after. Why? Why is this important? Because this is what we talked about in the very beginning. Does God get to be God over every aspect of your life? From the smallest to the greatest to the most impactful, is God the most important person in your life? If so, how can you entertain the thought of committing to make a person the most important person in your life who doesn't view God as the most important? Doesn't love the Lord, doesn't reference his word, and plan according to his will.

But we love each other. That's the objection we hear. But we love each other. How can I say no to my feelings? Does God get to be God over your feelings? Yeah, he does. And when God speaks and says, "No, that feeling is wrong." You need to change that feeling, by the power of the spirit of that can happen. It's a question of obedience or disobedience. I've heard, but I've prayed and I feel like this is God's will, "No it's not God's will because God will never contradict what he's already said. It's not God's will." So if you, Christian are dating right now an unbeliever, you need to break up with them. Completely break up with them. "We're no longer dating." "Why?" "Because God said this is wrong." If you really love him, this is what you do. If you really love God, that's what...

But I'm witnessing to them? You can witness to them without having to date them. Bring them to church and you're sitting six-feet-apart, praise God. It's not on you to save them. Tell them about Jesus. God's sovereign. If he saves them, tremendous. Then you can get married. Praise God. So are you willing to honor God there? And this is very important decision that you can make even prior to, so if you're dating. And then if you are hoping to get married, pursuing marriage, praying about marriage, your options are believers. And I understand that as Boston is limited. I understand all that, but we believe in a God of miracles. So just keep praying. And by the way, I'll just say, it's not that big of a deal. Marriage isn't that big of a deal. My wife's not here at the service, so I can say that. It's not that big of a deal. Saint Paul says in 1 Corinthians, he says, "If you're married, okay, great. If you're doing business, okay, great. What really matters ultimately is that you love God that you're satisfied in him. That's the most important relationship. So that's number one.

Number two if you do get married still, you get to a place where you together are worshiping the Lord. So you can worship the Lord when you're married. That's the point there.

Point three is fight for marital faithfulness. If you do get married, you fight for marital faithfulness as decreed by God. And this is Malachi 2:13-16. So one of the issues that the priests were allowing and actually participating themselves, they were marrying unbelievers. And then the second issue was once they got married, even to believers after a while, they're like, "Ah, we're not in love anymore." And they would pursue divorce. So Malachi speaks in verse 13. And this second thing you do, you cover the Lord's altar with tears, with weeping, with groaning because he no longer regards the offering or accepts it with favor from your hand. But you say, why does he not? So the people were like "We're worshiping God, we're asking for his blessings. He's not blessing us." There's a lot of emotion here. And God doesn't seem to be hearing their emotion. Well, because God doesn't bless a lifestyle that he has already rebuked in his law.

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's 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 garments with violence," the LORD of hosts. "So guard yourselves in your spirit and do not be faithless."

So verse 13, the second thing you do that God sees and God does not honor is displeased with, you cover the Lord's altar with tears. That you are showing a lot of emotion. God's not blessing. That's verse 14 because the Lord was witness between you and the wife of your youth, to whom you have been faithless, same word that was used talking about intermarriage. Again, faithless talking about a lack of fidelity to God, which leads to a lack of fidelity in the marriage. And what's being forbidden here is not divorce in general. It's aversion divorce, divorce because of dislike.

In the old Testament divorces permitted for a sexual infidelity, in the New Testament scripture also adds the desertion when an unbeliever desserts a believer, divorce is allowed. But the divorce that he's talking about here is neither of those. He's talking about divorce because they just fell out of love. And he emphasizes here, "No, no, you've made a covenant with the wife of your youth. She is your companion, your best friend." That's what marriage is at the heart of it. It's a friendship, husband and wife companions, best friends. And there's a covenant. That's the word that's used. A covenant is not a contract. A contract is if I fulfill my end of a bargain and you fulfill your end of the bargain and we keep the contract. If not, the contract is broken, a covenant is a lifelong commitment from the perspective of scripture. The Hebrew word for companion, since the covenant is being knit or joined together, pointing to the closest to the relationship.

Verse 15, did he not make them one, husband, wife? And we see this from Genesis 2, Adam wakes up and he says, "You're bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh, you're blood of my blood, we're the same blood, we're family." Marriage makes family and family is from God's perspective, family's to be permanent. So as asinine, as crazy, as ludicrous as it is to say to my kids, "I am going to abandon you, I am going to divorce you." From God's perspective, that's the same level. Marriage is permanent. And Jesus in Matthew 19, points to Genesis 2 and says, "Yes, that was intended from the very beginning. And Malachi looks at divorce from the perspective of Genesis 2, but then also from the perspective of children. "With a portion of the spirit and the unions of God makes them one with the Holy Spirit." And what was the one God seeking?

So God has a purpose in our marriage and a purpose that transcends our feelings or fulfillment or satisfaction. And the purpose is godly offspring. He attacks the sin from the perspective of children because this decision of marriage is where children are influenced to understand God, who God is. And they understand what family is. And our marriage are to be gospel presentations to our children and to the world. And our families are to be gospel presentations that God does not abandon his children. Jesus Christ loves his bride and doesn't divorce her. So from God's perspective, he says, "It's not just about your feelings, not about your desires. It's not about your satisfaction." How does this impact your children from a generational perspective? So this is why you don't marry an unbeliever because God's desire is Godly offspring. And this is why you work at staying married. He says, "Guard yourselves in the spirit, protect yourselves, because God cares not just about this relationship, but generationally speaking.

My wife and I were talking about this. And she's like, "What are you preaching on?" I was like, "The fact that God tells me to love you." And she's like, "Why does God have to tell you to love me?" She doesn't come to the service. I can be a little more honest. It's kind of a catch 22. So my answer was, "You know exactly why? Because God tells you the same thing." There are times where you're married even if you don't like each other, just like there are times when you are still caring for your kids. There are times where I don't like my kids, there are. And you do it because God tells you, that's the reason why God's telling you because he has to tell you because there's flesh and sinful desire and all of this. So when we view marriage as just something romantic and then when the romance is gone and then we ... No, it's, it's a matter of obedience. Love is a choice. Love is a commitment.

And by the way, there's also times when I don't like myself and you don't like yourself, and it's not like you get divorced from yourself. You still like, "We're in this together, me and myself." Where you just keep going.

C. S. Lewis has this great definition of love in Mere Christianity. He says, "Love as distinct from being in love is not merely a feeling. It's a deep unity maintained by the will and deliberately strengthened by habit, reinforce in Christian marriages, the grace, which both partners ask and receive from God. They can have this love for each other, even at those moments when they do not like each other, as you love yourself when you do not like yourself." So from God's perspective, we need to understand that marriage isn't about us. Marriage is so much more. It's to be a picture, a sign of the gospel of Jesus Christ. And God has plans for our marriage, for our families that are so much more than just ourselves.

In Malachi 2:16 "For the man who does not love his wife but divorces," 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. Twice he says, this isn't for me. This is from the Lord. Why does he do that? Because people don't like to be told what to do. In particular, in the most intimate parts of life. Did God really say? That's the first temptation in the garden? Yes, he did. And here he talks about the man that does see divorce. He covers his garment with violence. What's he talking about? It's referring to the Hebrew custom of a man when he proposed, he would cover the woman with his garment, draping and over her as a picture of protective care and provision. I'm devoting myself to care for you. And he says, "When you divorce, it's like yanking off that protective covering." And the idea here is that the husband is the head of the wife called to tenderly, nourish, cherish, and protect her as his own body.

The Bible doesn't command men to be the head of the wife. It's an inescapable fact. The question is, what kind of head of the household are we husbands? Are we faithful and diligent and effective, or we passive inattentive and ineffective? And it's not that we Lord over. And we don't King over our wives. We shepherd. We are under-shepherds under Jesus Christ. We follow Jesus Christ. So we, as the shepherds, we know where we're going because we're following Christ, we're leading by example. And we're involved, responsible, protecting, providing, instructing, and correcting. And so here, this is a word of the Lord for spouses, for our marriages. What's the marriage secret technique that God gives us here? Is guard your spirits. Guard your spirit do not be faithless. Guard your spirit don't be faithless, the word guard here means to fight, fight the good fight of faith that has to do with loving God, our relationship with God. And also, our relationship with our spouse with our family, it is a fight.

We have an enemy in Satan, we have an enemy in our flesh. We have an enemy in the world. It is a fight. So we fight indifference, halfheartedness, passivity, and we fight it by looking to the gospel of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ does not compartmentalize his faith. Everything he did was for the glory of God, everything. He loves people. He loved God. He loved his bride, which is the church. And he gave himself for her. Jesus Christ, the good shepherd laid his life down for the sheep. But he's also the lamb of God who went to the cross as a sacrifice for our sin. A lamb that was led to the slaughter. He was faithful even when we were faithless.

And on the cross, Jesus gave his best. God gave his best to us. And God's best on the cross, God's son. This lamb of God that took away the sins of the world. He became sin. He became that offering, the part of that offering the dung, that was supposed to be brought outside the city. Jesus was brought outside the city in a sense, he became our sin so that we might receive the righteousness of God. That's how we see how much Jesus loves, how much God loves us. And when we see that it fills our heart with love. He fought for us, we are to do the same. He sacrificed for us, we are to do the same for him, for our spouses, for our children, for our church. Why? Because Jesus Christ paid it all, and all to Him I owe.

So if you're not a believer, we welcome you to become a believer today in God. We welcome you to repent of sin and turn to Jesus Christ and give your life over to him. And if you are a believer and you're seeing yourself indifference, lackadaisical of spirit and following the Lord, come repent, receive grace. Let's pray, Lord, we thank you for this time. The Holy Scriptures, what an incredible book, the book of Malachi is. And we thank you, Lord, that you are faithful even when we are faithless. And we do repent that often we remove you from the centrality in our lives. And we put ourselves on the throne of our lives. We repent of that. And we ask that you come, you cleanse us. And that you also feel the Holy Spirit to empower us to live lives of righteousness, lives that honor you, lives that revere you, not just the name. And we pray this in Christ's Name. Amen.