November 9, 2008

"Committed to God and to Each Other"

Malachi 2: 10- 16

"I'm only human, you know."  Has anyone ever said that to you?  What do people mean by it?  It's usually used as an excuse.  Somebody gets mad, flies off the handle, and says or does something cruel to another person.  And they defend themselves by saying something like, "I can only take so much.  I'm only human, you know."  Sometimes we use a form of this to overlook wrongs done by children.  "He's only a kid.  Give him a break."

Now, I wonder what the reaction would be if we applied that statement to other things in our lives.  Let's say you buy a new computer.  You turn it on once and the hard drive crashes.  So, you take it back to the computer store.  And the guy there looks at you says, "It's only a computer.  What do you expect?  Computer hard drives crash all the time.  Or, you're walking down the sidewalk and a dog bites you.  You complain to the owner.  And he says to you, "He's only a dog.  Dogs bite!"  

I wonder whether or not these men of Israel in our scripture, if they were living today, would have used an excuse like that.  Before we speculate too much, however, we should clearly understand what they were doing.  At first glance our scripture may seem that the prophet Malachi was condemning these men for divorcing their wives.  In verse 16, God says, "I hate divorce."  Yet, this would be an incomplete and rather superficial understanding of this scripture.

By saying this I certainly do not wish to defend divorce.  Jesus, himself, came out very strongly against it.  Clearly, God does hate divorce.  And so should we.  Yet, in saying that, I am certain that those who have undergone the pain of divorce or who are in a marriage that is breaking up hate it more than any of us, that is because more than anyone else they know the deep pain involved. 

As bad as divorce is, however, there is more being condemned in this scripture than just divorce.  Look at verse 11,

Judah has desecrated the sanctuary the LORD loves, by marrying the daughter of a foreign god.

The men of Judah were divorcing their Judean wives so that they could marry pagan women from foreign surrounding countries.  Certainly this is horrendous, especially given the plight of women in that day.  It was next to impossible for many of these divorced women to find work and support themselves.  They were forced to live on the street and starve!  So, why were these men doing this?  Have you ever heard the statement, "he married her for her money?" 

(There was the rich elderly woman who married a handsome young man.  She wanted to be sure of his love for her.  So, she told him.  I put all my money in the stock of a company that just went broke.  I lost it all.  Do you still love me?  "Yes, I do and I'm going to miss you terribly.")

That's what was going on here.  The men of Judah were marrying these women, so that they could become part of a wealthy pagan family.  They were very poor and so it surely was tempting to marry into wealth.  Their first marriages were probably arranged by parents when still quite young.  So, a man may not have been all that attracted to his wife in the first place.  It was pretty easy to dump her, so that he could marry into wealth.  And he certainly could rationalize that he was within his rights to do this.  The Law of Moses merely stipulated that all he needed to do was to give her a certificate of divorce.  And so he continued to come to worship and act like nothing was wrong.  Maybe these men didn't say, "I'm only human."  But they acted that way.  They had no shame.

Does this kind of behavior sound at all familiar?  I'm not asking you to look around at the Christian community in general, but to look within.  I don't know what goes on in your homes.  But you do.  And I know what goes on in my home.  Are there things that should bother us, but don't?  Do you ever rationalize what you know in your heart is wrong?  Have you ever been tempted to use the phrase, "I'm only human, you know?"  Do you and I have a sense of shame anymore?

In verse 13, God told the men of Judah that he would not accept their gifts and offerings.  We should remember that the offerings mentioned here are the sacrifices.  Given the fact that these were accompanied by tears, this would indicate that these were probably sacrifices for sin-sacrifices that pointed ahead to the forgiveness we have through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

All our sins can be forgiven in and through Jesus' sacrifice.  But, we should take seriously what Jesus said in Matthew 6: 14- 15,

For if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.

We should ponder again what Jesus says about caring for the least of these my brothers.

I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.'

We should think about what John says in 1 John 4: 7- 11,

Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son- into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.  Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.

In 1 Corinthians Paul warns those in the Corinthian church that if they are not showing love to their brothers and sisters, then they should not presume to take the Lord's Supper.  1 Corinthians 11: 29 says

For anyone who eats and drinks without recognizing the body of the Lord eats and drinks judgment on himself. 

If we look at the rest of the letter, we find that when Paul refers to the body of Christ, he means the body here on earth, that is the church- we and our brothers and sisters who are united in Christ.

And he goes on to say that God had sent sickness among the people because they were celebrating communion without living as one body in Christ who loved and cared about each other.

If we confess our sins he is faithful and just and will forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.  But, God is not mocked.  Our confession must be sincere.

God did not accept the sacrifices and worship of these hypocritical men.  Why is this so?  Look at verse 10.  He sees that our breaking faith with one another is the same as breaking our covenant with him.  Why do we profane the covenant of our fathers by breaking faith with each other?

And that's true for God's people today as well.  Remember what Jesus said in his parable of the sheep and the goats.

‘I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.'

To understand this we must look the first two sentences in this verse.  "Have we not all one Father." 

Now some would understand the one Father to be Abraham or Jacob.  That's a possible understanding.  But, even better is the understanding suggested by Jeremiah 31:9, in which God says,

They will come with weeping;

    They will pray as I bring them back.

    I will lead them beside streams of water

    on a level path where they will not stumble,

    because I am Israel's father,

    and Ephraim is my firstborn son.

Of all the people on the face of the earth, we are the ones whom God has saved to be his very own.  We are the ones who call him Father.

1 John 3:1 put it this way,

How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him.

Because of that, God treats us as his children and expects us to treat each other like brothers and sisters, like members of the family-no, not like families often are, but like families ought to be:  loving, caring, loyal.  When we are not, it dishonors our Father and the price he paid to make us his children. 

But, there is more to this than just that.  Because we are his children, we are one with God.  Often human parents feel their children's pain and they see attacks on their children as attacks on them.  That's even more true with our heavenly Father.  To belong to him is to be one with him.

The injury done by the men of Judah against their wives had further ramifications.  They were not just injuring God's present family.  Their actions affected their children, God's future family.

Listen to verse 15,

¹⁵Has not the LORD made them one? In flesh and spirit they are his. And why one?  Because he was seeking godly offspring

For Judah this meant that God wanted them to have children who were part of his covenant and who knew and loved, and worshipped him alone.  Having a wife that was not part of the covenant and who worshipped a pagan god made this more difficult.

Although the New Testament warns us as Christians about marrying non-Christians, it does give some comfort to those who became Christians after they were already married to an unbelieving spouse, 1 Corinthians 7: 14 says

For the unbelieving husband has been sanctified through his wife, and the unbelieving wife has been sanctified through her believing husband. Otherwise your children would be unclean, but as it is, they are holy.

Here God comforts such folks, promising them their children still belonged to him.  But, this is a quite different situation than a Christian marrying an unbeliever.

Surely the actions of the fathers affected their children.  Many were probably abandoned along with their mothers.  And even if they weren't, the cruelty of the fathers would surely affect them.  We also should also be aware that when we Christian parents don't act like Christians, when our words and lives do not show love to our spouses, the result on our children's faith can be devastating. Our children do pick up on our attitudes toward others.

I remember seeing a little cartoon in Reader's Digest.  A priest is visiting the home of a member of his parish.  Behind the member is a parrot with its mouth tied shut.  Parrots only mimic what they hear.  We should never forget that children are a lot like parrots in that regard.

In Matthew 18: 6, Jesus said,

If anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a large millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.

And we must also not forget that God also put us in this world to gather his lost children.  And they will be much more attracted to our Christian family if they see that our words are matched by our actions.

God is Israel's and Judah's father.  He is also their Creator, not only he made them, but also because he made them as a nation to be his very own.  Listen to Isaiah 43: 1,

But now, this is what the LORD says-

    he who created you, O Jacob,

    he who formed you, O Israel:

    "Fear not, for I have redeemed you;

    I have summoned you by name; you are mine.

Today, the God who saved us in and through his Son Jesus Christ says those same things to us.  I have formed you to be my very own.  What wonderful words of comfort.  But they are also words that separate us from the rest of humanity.  

2 Corinthians 5: 17 says,

¹⁷Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! 

We began by considering the commonly used excuse, "I am only human, you know."  That is obvious.  You are not a dog or a cat or a mouse.  But the bigger question is what kind of human are you?  Are you part of the sinful fallen humanity that resulted from Adam's sin or have you a part of a new humanity in Christ?

London businessman Lindsay Clegg told the story of a warehouse property he was selling.  The building had been empty for months and needed repairs.  Vandals had damaged the doors, smashed the windows, and strewn trash all over the place.  As he showed a prospective buyer the property, he took pains to say that he would replace the broken windows, bring in a crew to correct any structural damage, and clean out the garbage.  The buyer said, "Forget about the repairs.  When I buy this place, I'm going to build something completely different.  I don't want the building; I want the site."

Beloved of our Father, that is what God is saying about us.  I want the site.  I want you, but not the old you.  I want to build something new.  "I am only human," you say.  Each area of our lives that is covered by that statement he seeks to destroy with his wrecking ball.  And in its place he wants to build someone new.  AMEN!