Malachi Chapter Two, Dealing Treacherously

 

Conversely, Paul lists the works of the flesh in contrast to the spiritual fruit yielded by following the Lord. These are evident, Paul tells us, or easily discerned. Anyone can take note of them because their manifestation is not subtle. Interestingly the first four works of the flesh listed involve sexual perversion of various kinds, foremost being adultery: or a married partner having sex with someone besides their spouse. The next three items are fornication, uncleanness and lewdness, Galatians 5:19. The HCSB groups these items a little differently, and names them, “sexual immorality (adultery and fornication), moral impurity (uncleanness), promiscuity (lewdness),” to help clarify the terms a little. Sexual deviance is an assault upon marriage because it separates marriage’s consummation as something tawdry that can (and should) be shared freely, without regret, and often without restraint. The moral ruin the collapse of traditional marriage has heaped upon modern society is immense. Divorce is merely one symptom. Abortion is another. Our modern times deal with child sacrifice of a new type. If children are meant to be the result of a God-ordained marriage, then it makes sense that the crown jewel of modern sexual license is abortion. We now aim to freely and legally murder the next generation that was supposed to be raised up by us. Instead children are once more passed through the fire to Molech, so to speak, courtesy of Margaret Sanger and Planned Parenthood. Yet in Exodus we read, “If men fight, and hurt a woman with child…if any harm follows, then you shall give life for life,” Exodus 21:22, 23. The unborn are children made in God’s image; they are the offspring we are meant to fill the earth with, born of the institution that our Lord loves. Do not act treacherously.

Here we come to the type and the antitype. If marriage is the holy institution our God loves, then divorce stands as the opposite. The root of opposite is oppose, or to contradict, to face against. Divorce, in its essence, does this. The Lord God of Israel, reminding the Jews who is addressing them, hates what He permitted Moses to legislate. Why do so, then, someone may ask? We can’t know for sure, other than Jesus informing us that our hard hearts are the culprits. But that alone gives us a good indication as to why He chose to allow it. In Noah’s time we learn that the people of his day had gone quite astray. “The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually,” Genesis 6:3. About 4,500 years ago man was utterly perverse, hence the Flood. Has man changed for the better? Well, man is still sinful; possessed of a sin nature that does not seek the things of God, or the things of his neighbor, but his own interests. Jeremiah wrote, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; who can know it?” Jeremiah 17:9. This was now around 600 B.C., or about 1,900 years after the Flood of Noah’s time. Fast forward to about 90 A.D. and we find John writing, “the whole world lieth in wickedness,” 1 John 5:19, KJV. The NKJV renders the passage, “the whole world lies under the sway of the wicked one.” Nearly 700 years later, and not much has changed as to the general moral and spiritual condition of man by and large, and individuals respectively.

 

Now imagine if you will a binding contract of marriage that NEVER permits you to depart. Granted, Jesus elaborated, permitting divorce on the grounds of sexual immorality, Matthew 19:9. But God’s intention was solidarity in marriage. What would our hard hearts concoct in an effort to escape the confines of an unwanted spouse? We already see headlines of husbands and wives murdering one another to gain their freedom, even with divorce available, as it has been for hundreds of years. What mayhem would be unleashed if marriage could not be dissolved? Knowing this, I do not doubt God permitted it on the grounds of preserving life and safety.

 

However, this does not change the very real fact that Yahweh hates divorce. Malachi explains that divorce covers a man’s garment with violence. The NIV translates verse 16: “The man who hates and divorces his wife,” says the Lord, the God of Israel, “does violence to the one he should protect,” says the Lord Almighty.” Since the two are one flesh, united by God we are told that what God has joined, let not man separate. If we are one body (symbolic of Christians with Christ and the church) imagine now the bloody, nightmarish picture of a man tearing a piece of his own body off in an effort to be rid of it. The divorce these men sought does violence to the women they had once sworn to protect and nurture. We read in Malachi 1:11 and 14 that God’s name was to be both great and feared (reverenced) among the nations. One reason was that Israel was to be God’s elect vessel for His purpose of reconciling the world back to Himself.

 

They were His chosen people, taken out of the nations and given manifold blessings no other nation enjoyed. But now they behave just like the surrounding nations and worse. Having profound knowledge from God’s revelation in the Torah, the Psalms and the Prophets, their conduct should have reflected the honored heights to which their covenant God raised them. But like the state of our churches, the light we’re shown only makes us scramble faster into darkness, where we can indulge in our double standard while condemning others for doing the same. Knowledge doesn’t liberate; it condemns. That is, if we do not translate it into action through the purifying fire of faith. Israel erred grievously and felt no remorse toward the cast off wives of worshiper and priest alike. Christians, we are no better, forsaking our first love and taking the first steps into the prevalent apostasy we are currently drowning in. To Israel the warning to take heed to their spirit is issued a second time so they know that it is established by God, who will surely bring His purpose to pass, Genesis 41:32, Malachi 2:3, 12.