If you had turned to number 15
in the chorus book, the words would have fit that tune. Though
number 15 in our chorus book is a much more mournful song,
so that upbeat tempo probably wouldn't have worked. But there
would have been the right amount of syllables. So if you will open your Bibles
to Malachi chapter 2, the last book in the Old Testament, So if you get to Matthew, back
up. Malachi chapter two, verse 16. I hate divorce, says the Lord,
God of Israel." Now, this is not a message about divorce. I'm not saying that it wouldn't
be suitable to have a message that addresses what the scriptures
have to say about divorce. In fact, it's a rather sad thing
to notice that even among those churches that are preaching the
same gospel we preach. Marriage is being taken less
seriously and divorce being practiced more freely. I suppose we shouldn't
be altogether surprised Everything drifts in the wrong direction,
and it takes willful effort on the part of people to resist
the change that the world keeps trying to impose. But this message
is not about divorce. However, we can understand what
this text of scripture is about, unless we understand something
of God's viewpoint on marriage and divorce. For divorce among
the Jews, and in particular among the priesthood, is the context
in which God makes the comments that are found in Chapter 2. So if you don't understand how
God views divorce, You're not going to understand why he said
the things that he said in Malachi chapter 2. And you won't be able
to see their spiritual application in Christ. Now, so let us note then, and
I'm just going to make a few remarks about marriage and divorce,
because really that's one subject, you know. think that divorce is an issue
simply because marriage exists. And God set up marriage and devised
marriage. And consequently, breaking a
marriage is a serious matter. So marriage and divorce, the
subjects go together. The word that's used here, divorce,
simply means to put or send away. Now, in the context here of the
scriptures and really of culture, In most of the world in that
day, there was no such thing as a woman divorcing her husband,
because women simply didn't have much right to determine their
own destiny in any matters. Now, God was not saying that
that's the way things should be. But if God's going to speak
to us, he has to speak to us in the language and context of
the world in which we live. Consequently, he was speaking
to men And he was saying, I hate putting away, sending away. And
from what I've read, that's all that was required of a man, of
a Jewish man, to say, you know, three times, I divorce you, I
divorce you, I divorce you, and it's done. And he sends his wife
away. Puts her out. He will not fulfill
for her the duties of a husband, nor does he feel any obligation
any longer to keep the promises he made. And in the Jewish economy,
that's the way it worked. And God says, I hate that. I
hate that. He states his attitude succinctly
and powerfully. He didn't say, now let's sit
and have a chat about divorce. He says, I hate divorce. He didn't
say divorce isn't the best thing. He said, I hate divorce. He's not at all ambivalent, and
he hates the very concept of it. So it must be that he hates every
instance of it. Now, hang with me here. preaching
any of this to beat upon people. I'm just saying if we're going
to understand this scripture, we've got to understand how God
views divorce, and therefore how we ought to view it. Now,
religious people often debate over the issue of what, if any,
situations make it acceptable. to initiate a divorce. The Pharisees asked the Lord
this. They said, is it lawful for a man to put away his wife
for any reason? And most people, when they said
any reason, they mean any reason that Moses said was acceptable.
And they were always trying to trap him by making it look like
he was saying something different than Moses. Now, they prove here what the
real heart of a legalist is. And that's why we don't take
a legalistic approach to marriage and divorce, because what's really
being sought after when people are saying, are there any justifiable
reasons for divorce, they're doing just like the Pharisees
were asking, how can they be excused from
the demands of righteousness. After all, they prided themselves
on their righteousness, but like every other human being in the
world, there were some of them who grew weary of the spouse
they had, and they wanted to know under what circumstances
can we cease to act like a righteous person is supposed to act, and
yet will not be considered unrighteous on that account. Have you ever
noticed that whenever you get among those who want to guide
their lives by law, the real question becomes, how far can
I stray from perfection and still be accepted? I remember when
I came here the Sabbath day, which they thought was on Sunday,
they observed it rather strictly, especially from the viewpoint
of someone who comes where I come from, where Sunday was the day
people went to church and usually things were different but I can't
remember anybody other than maybe the Jews in the area who thought
that the Sabbath day you were supposed to not enjoy anything,
you know. But that's the way it was when
I got here and a lot of people knowing that we didn't practice
Sabbath keeping, it kind of piqued their interest because They were
looking to find more excuses from having to observe it. And now here it is, half a lifetime
later, and it's true, it'd be rare for you to find someone
out mowing their grass on Sunday, but there's a lot more kids playing
outside, plenty more businesses open on Sunday. They just keep
finding new exceptions to what they thought was the rule. Because
legalists are not truly interested in righteousness. They're just
interested in not going to hell. So how far can I walk outside
the boundary lines and still go to heaven? That's what lies
at the heart of a legalist. And the Lord, in answering them,
And the Lord was so wise in this. He did not give them any justifiable
reason for divorce. You say, well, I thought he mentioned,
you know, unfaithfulness. He did. But even then, it was
not as though he was saying it's okay. He was saying it's tolerated. Instead, our Lord said, this
is what marriage is. And he went all the way back
to the beginning, Adam and Eve. And he brought Adam and Eve together,
and he said, they are one flesh. One flesh. God made them one
flesh. And what God has joined together,
let no one separate. Now that kind of put the Pharisees
back on their heels, didn't it? Whatever excuses they may be
seeking so that they can put away their lives and still look
righteous in the eyes of the people and still hold their head
high and all of that, the Lord said, whoever God joins together,
don't let any man separate. Now, he also went on to say this.
He said, Moses wrote the law concerning divorce because of
the hardness of your hearts. You see, the Lord is wise. There is such a thing as perfect
righteousness, but he knows even better than you and me. that we're never going to achieve
that. And so he did make an outlet permissible under old covenant
law. He's not saying this is okay. He's just saying, I'm going
to tolerate this because you're so hard hearted that there will
arise conditions in which it is worse for two people to stay
together than if they were to separate. You say, like what? Well, keeping in mind that women
didn't have the right to divorce in the first place, men would
come to despise their wives, and in that, hatred towards them
would begin to abuse them, and to beat them, and to treat them
with contempt. And they'd go out and have affairs,
and this kind of thing. And all that the Lord was saying,
look, I would rather that you just annul, break that marriage,
just go ahead and make it obvious, just break it, than to live like
that. Better, and again, understanding
only the man had the right to initiate a divorce anyway, he
said it would be better for you to send your wife away. than
to beat her. It'd be better for you to send
your wife away than to cheat on her. Or if the woman cheated on the
man, the Lord knew how men were going to react to that. It's
better for you to send her away than to sit there and stew in
envy and anger and bitterness You see? So the Lord never said
there are conditions in which it is all right or good to divorce. He just says there are some things
worse than divorce. So knowing our Lord's attitude
about divorce, that sometimes divorces are necessary, but they're never considered
a good thing. Just sometimes they're not as bad as what would
happen if you remained married. Knowing that, let me say a few
things. When I was thinking about this, I was thinking especially
of you young people. When I say you young people,
really just anybody that's unmarried, but we've got people here from
what, eight or nine? Well, no younger than that. up
through their teens. And I realize that you think,
for you, marriage is a long way off. When Bonnie and I got married,
Bonnie was 19. Some of you were younger when
you got married, weren't you? And you may be 14 or 15 or 10
or 11, and you think, boy, this is so long. Why do I even have
to think about it? Because you need to have in your
mind right now, set it in your mind, because if you don't set
it in your mind, it's not going to stay there. You need to know
what this marriage thing is about, because it won't be long. If
it hadn't already started, you're noticing people of the other
sex and kind of attracted to them. And the time will come
when you'll want to be married. Almost all of you. That's the
way it's going to be. So you need to know some things
ahead of time. For to the unmarried, be careful
who you marry. Really, take this seriously.
You're going to meet people that you fall in love with. But anybody
you fall in love with, you can fall out of love later on. Now, there's nothing wrong with
falling in love, but understand that kind of love will not sustain
a marriage. It may start a relationship but
it will not sustain a marriage. Love is not a feeling. The Bible
says rather plainly, love does not seek its own, meaning love
is not that which causes us to try to get something from someone. Love moves us to give to someone. Now, when we fall in love, what
that means is we saw someone we want. That means we're seeking
our own. We're seeking what we want. Now
once again, I'm not saying that's bad, I'm just saying don't confuse
that with the love that will create and sustain a marriage. Be careful who you marry because it's serious. Realize that no matter how compatible
you and your spouse-to-be may think you are, conflict is going
to arise. When I was working for Orkin
back in Huntington, West Virginia, there was one house I would go
to treat. And I just noticed this. They
hadn't been married very long. But that woman had, that house
was like a shrine to their wedding. There are pictures mostly of
her in her, you know, wedding gown and everything. I mean,
it was lace, it was hearts, it was all this stuff. And I would
have been only about 27 or 28, but I thought, this woman was
in love with a wedding. There's a difference between
a wedding and a marriage. A wedding may be lots and lots
of fun. Reality sets in just a little
bit later. And know this, there are no perfect
marriages because there are no perfect people. There will be
times that you will wonder whether you picked the right one. You will disappoint your spouse,
and your spouse will disappoint you. You will get mad at one
another, and sometimes you'll stay angry for a long time. None of those things is a justification
for divorce. Do not get married thinking this,
well, I hope this works out. Because if that's the attitude
you take into your marriage, it will not work out. Marriages
don't work. Married people work on their
marriage. And it takes work. If you go
into marriage with the idea that there could arise some set of
circumstances, that would cause you to break your vows of marriage
and leave, you can be sure that someday those circumstances will
arise. If you go in thinking you can
get out, in all likelihood, someday you will get out. I've got to
give God thanks for this. My wife and I grew up in homes
in which the word divorce was hardly even a known word. I'm not saying all of this, and
remember, I'm not trying to be legal about this. I'm not trying
to pronounce judgment on anybody. I just want to impress us all
with the importance of this. If you are a believer in the
Lord Jesus Christ, do not marry an unbeliever. It would be better
for you to remain single your entire life than to be joined
to an unbeliever in marriage. And you say, why? Well, first
of all, if you are a believer, there's no one and nothing that
you love like you love the Lord Jesus Christ. He's not just the
top of the list. He utterly consumes the rest
of the list. No single thing, nor group of
things, can rival the love that you have for Christ. But if you marry an unbeliever,
you're marrying someone who has exactly the opposite opinion
of the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, my poor wife, she's got
to put up with so much of me talking about our marriage, but
that's the marriage I know. Now, you all heard me talk about
it. I did fall in love with Bonnie really, really fast. I don't know that she ever fell. But if I had taken her home,
and then one of the weekends, and we did go home, back to my
house, several weekends while we were still going to college.
And after she met my parents and we were alone, she said,
you know something? I can't stand your mom. I mean, good grief. Do you think I would have married
her? I wouldn't have. I'd have said,
well, if you can't get along with my mom, you're not going
to get along with me. Well, if that's so. Imagine what it'd be like to
be united to someone who despises the one you love more than anyone. Now, there are some whom the
Lord saves, like in a couple, he saves only one of them sometime
after the marriage. And they go on loving one another
as human beings. But there is, for the believer,
always a part of their life that they cannot share with their
unbelieving spouse. So I tell you this, if you're
unmarried, do not marry an unbeliever. And if you're looking for a spouse,
you don't want to send them an application form with somewhere
in there, are you a believer in the Lord Jesus? But find out
pretty quick. I told somebody once, I said,
bring them to church fast. Don't go on too many dates before
they've come here and found out what you're about at your very
heart. Because if you're not singing
that same song there, it's going to cause trouble everywhere else.
And to the married, I say this, do all within your power to nurture,
strengthen, and build up your marriage. It does require effort. Never put your spouse away unless
and until their conduct has become so bad that they have, in essence,
already broken the covenant of marriage. And all that divorce
is is a matter of going down to the courthouse and making
legal what your spouse has already made, practically speaking, true. Now, I'm not going to go through
all the situations I think would constitute that, because like
I said, this isn't a message about divorce, but it will give
us some insight into this scripture. And to all I say this, there
is nothing in all of this natural life, in this cursed world, to
be compared with the beauty and blessing of marriage. Now, I
had great parents. And my 22 years under their roof
was a good 22 years. But there's nothing to be compared
with my relationship with my wife, nothing. And I would give up everything
except Christ for the sake of that relationship. I'm thankful that neither my
parents nor my in-laws ever sought to interject themselves into
our marriage, particularly to stand in between us and put a
wedge between us. Because I know, actually, for
both of us, if a choice had to be made, we'd already made the
choice when we said, I do. Work at your marriage. Put up
with your spouse. They're putting up with you. Work to be as good a spouse as
you can. And put up with your spouse.
whatever they are, as much as is possible. Why? Because unless the Lord makes
you die a young person, someday you're going to be old. And there
will be nothing more comforting to you in your old age than a
spouse you love and have spent the greater portion of your life
walking with. And you'll even look back on
the difficult times, and you'll say, it was difficult,
but it was good for us. Do not regret going through it
in order to get here. So marriage is serious. So serious to God, he says, I
hate divorce. Now, why? And this is what those
who do not know God nor his gospel would say. They might think to
themselves, OK, you You can say it's not good. You know, divorce
is not good when there's children in the home because they need
both parents. So yeah, we ought to hang on till the children
are grown. But after that, you know, whatever is best for us. No, that's not how it is. Why is it that God says I hate
divorce? Because marriage Here's why God
hates divorce. Marriage was designed as an illustration
and a natural manifestation, if you will, of the relationship
that exists between God and his people. And to break it says horrible
things about God. and horrible things about God's
people. He says, for example, here in verse 11, Malachi chapter
2, Judah has broken faith. Now remember, at this point,
Israel and Judah are two separate nations. And Judah was the nation
that remained faithful the longest. But just like, you know, they
eventually went the way that Israel did. But it says, 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. Now,
the daughter of a foreign god was a euphemism for an idol.
And here's what actually happened. They brought an idol into the
temple. And what did that say? That said that they did not count
their God, Jehovah, to be the one and only God. They did not
count him to be enough of a God. They were acting just like a
man who says, well, I'm not saying my wife is bad, but she's not
enough. And I'm going to, as in this
day when polygamy was tolerated, never approved of, just tolerated, they would get them another so-called
wife, or as with the kings, and doubtless some other royal type
officials, they'd also have in their harem concubines. What
are they saying in all of this? Oh, my wife's pretty. She's nice. She's not enough. I want something
more. And when they brought those idols
into the Lord's temple, they said, he's not sufficient. And in so doing, seeing that
God insists he will be the only God or no God at all, in bringing
in another God, they sent him away. They put him away. Now, you might think, well, if
I got a divorce, you know, that's not what I'm meaning to say.
I'm not meaning to say God is not enough. Well, you may not
be meaning to say it, but by breaking that covenant that illustrates
the relationship between God and his people, you are saying
God's not enough. He's not a good enough husband. Or the other way around, if you put away your spouse,
send them away, you are saying that God would send away one
of His own. We take great comfort, do we
not, in the faithfulness of our God? We know that we've proven unfaithful
many, many times, and yet we always go back to our God in
confidence, knowing this, He will never break faith with us. Shall we accuse Him of breaking
faith with us by breaking faith with our spouse? See, these things,
most of the laws or standards that God set up for us humans
to follow aren't an issue in and of themselves. They are only an issue because
our conduct related to these things says something about God
and the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. Every one of you here that is
a believer, you say, well, I would never say anything bad about
God. I would never say anything contrary
to the gospel. Yet, if one puts away his or
her spouse, that's exactly what he's doing. Now again, a disclaimer,
understanding that the world is as it is. There are some times
that divorce becomes a necessity. And you know, God said, I hate
divorce. He never did say, I hate divorced people. He doesn't hate them any more
than he does liars, thieves, or whatever it is you and I are.
You know, some people think, boy, I tell you, I never got
divorced, never even thought about it, never even considered
it. Big deal. You've lied, you cheated, you've
stolen, you are of a violent nature that God has restrained.
We're all those things. Divorce is not any worse a sin,
eternally speaking, than is any other sin. It's just that it
says so much publicly. After all, when I lie, am I not
saying God's a liar? Because I claim to be made in
his image. So if I lie, I'm saying God's
a liar. Everything we do that is rightfully counted as sin,
somehow or another, casts aspersions on God. It says bad things about
God, and that's why it's bad. Also, this, verse 15, has not the Lord
made them one? In flesh and spirit, they are
his. And why one? Because he was seeking
godly offspring. So guard yourself in spirit and
do not break faith with the wife of your youth. Now, you know that some people think
that one reason you shouldn't get divorced is because God wants
two believers to get together and have children because they
produce godly offspring. And so to break that union, then
you'll have ungodly offspring. No. You and I cannot produce
godly offspring, period. This can't happen. In fact, I
looked this up in Hebrew. Again, I feel I always have to
say I'm not a Hebrew expert, but there's places online where
Hebrew experts have written things down that I can read. And here's
what's interesting. That word translated godly, it's
not an adjective, it's a noun. It's the word Elohim. Now you're
familiar with the word El, which is short for aloha, my understanding
is, not the Hawaiian hello, but aloha, which is the singular
form of the word God. Elohim is the plural. But it has this plural noun,
elohim, and then this word Offspring or seed is how some, I think
the King James handles it. It's singular. So you got two
nouns in a row. Plural version of the word God,
singular version of the word seed. Now, I realized that the singular
form of the word seed could be used as a, quote, collective
noun for all of one's descendants. But you know, Paul said in Galatians,
when God made promise to Abraham, he said, unto you and your seed,
not seeds meaning many, but seed meaning one. So if you take these words, Elohim,
and God, our singular God, is often referred to in the Old
Testament in the plural. Strictly speaking, it says, in
the beginning, gods created the heavens and the earth. Ecclesiastes
says, remember thou thy creators, plural, in the days of your youth.
Why? Because there's more than one
god? No, because most languages, when they were speaking of someone
of greatness, They would refer to them in the plural because
they would figure the singular is just not enough for them.
They call it the plural of majesty. So even though it's Elohim plural,
it's speaking of the single God. It's not talking about godliness,
it's talking about God. And then seed. Who is the God
seed? Who is the only one who is God
and seed of the woman? Our Lord Jesus Christ. And he's
saying to them, to these Jews, he says, I chose you as a nation.
And I expected you to act better than the nations around you.
And here is the great blessing that I would give you as a nation
through your marriages. one day would come the God seed. Do not treat your marriages as
disposable. Now that's what he was saying
to them. Now here we are, we're the church of the Lord Jesus
Christ. We are in a sense God's wife. Now we're not going to
give rise to the Lord Jesus Christ as Mary did. But you and I preach
Christ, don't we? We come together, we worship
Christ like this. We are, as it were, the wife
of our God who bears Christ into this world, who bears the God
seed into this world. And if we act faithless, towards
our natural spouse and towards our spiritual spouse. What does
that say about the Christ whom we preach? You see how important these things
get? And then, how blessed it is for you and
me that we worship and have been saved by a God so faithful that he hates hardly anything
more than he hates unfaithfulness. He said to us, I hate divorce. What does that say? Well, some
people say, well, oh man, one more law for me to keep. Here's what the Lord is saying,
I will never divorce you. It was almost a year ago, wasn't
it, Tanner got married? Or did I miss a year and it's
two years? Okay, one year ago. And I was there and saw it, Eric
conducted the wedding. And they were going through the
typical vows. And then they got to the end
of the vows and each one of them said this to the other, said,
I will never divorce you. And I remember that, you know,
the simplicity of it, the directness of it. And yet that's what all
those flowery words beforehand meant. I will never divorce you. And that's what God says to his
people. In saying to them, I hate divorce.
He is not so much laying a burden upon them as he is saying to
them, I will never divorce you. We have given him justification
for it, haven't we? People say, am I justified in
divorcing my spouse if they cheat on me? Well, under the law, you
are. Do you want God to divorce you
because you've cheated on Him? See what I mean? Oh, what a wonderful
thing to know. And I tell you, brethren, this
is my hope. And if I didn't believe this,
I would have no reason for hope. Despite my horrible unfaithfulness
to my God, my God is faithful to me. He, the Lord Jesus Christ, says,
I will not ever, ever, ever leave you. I will not send you away. I will not break faith with you,
though you break faith with me. And if you break faith with me,
just as with the story of Hosea and his unfaithful wife, Gomer,
he says, you break faith with me, I will go out and get you.
I will find you in the marketplace where the world has used you
up, has made a prostitute out of you, and you have sold yourself
to the world. And now you're so used up, you're
just a very inexpensive life, so to speak. They don't think
you're any good as a prostitute anymore, so now all you can do
maybe is work in the kitchen and somebody's put you up on
the slave market. I'll go there and I'll buy you
back. And you will be mine. Because
you've always been mine. I will never divorce you. Aren't you glad the Savior says
that to us? I've given him countless reasons.
I've broken the covenant. I've set up an idol of my own
works right in his temple. I've come up here and preached
to you all and walked down the aisle thinking I did a good job.
That's an idol of self-righteous pride, and I brought it right
here. But he didn't send me away. He
didn't say, I divorce you three times. He didn't even say it
once. What a God we have! Even His
laws show us His grace and mercy.