Disloyalty in Marriage
Malachi 2:10-16
In the 50s and 60s, my father bought packs of baseball cards at the general store. In those days, they came with a stick of gum inside. He would chew the gum, then put the baseball cards on his bicycle spokes to make his bike sound like it had a motor. Today, those baseball cards would be worth thousands, hundreds of thousands, even millions of dollars if he had taken good care of them, but because he used them on his bicycle wheels instead, he “devalued” them. That’s what we are doing with marriage in America today.
In the 1950s, 20-22 was the median age for getting married. In 2025, the median age has risen by 10 years to 30-32. What’s more, statistics show that there are fewer marriages in the U.S. on a per-person average than at any previous point. Why might this be the case? While a variety of answers may be given as contributing causes, one answer must certainly be made clear: we disparage marriage. We treat it like something with low value.
According to a website called “WhattoGetMy.com,” there are five good reasons to marry:
The article goes on to point out that married people tend to experience better health, too.
But if these are the main reasons to marry, then marriage is no more important than going to Disneyland, taking on a hobby, investing in the stock market, or going on a diet. It’s good to do because it’s fun, beneficial, and improves your quality of life.
But marriage is far more important and valuable than this. It is a sacred, serious, special covenant before God. It is so special that more often than not you should want to do it, and it is so serious that you should do whatever you can to maintain that covenant for life, even at great personal cost.
In Malachi 2:10-16, God confronts and corrects a wrong view of marriage by his own people. He reminds them of two primary purposes for marriage, and between these two purposes he points out two ways they were violating these purposes. Let’s take a look.
For God’s people, marriage pictures God’s covenant with his people. (v. 10)
In 2:10, God asks three questions of his people. The first two questions reminded them about some important, obvious facts. The third question, then, draws attention to some wrong behavior which contradicted these facts. In other words, the first two questions point out what the people claimed to believe and know about God, then the third points out how their behavior contradicted the beliefs they claimed to hold.
This sequence is based on the premise that what you say you believe may not be what you actually believe. What you actually believe is revealed not by verbal statements but by the way you choose to live.
My little children, let us not love in word or in tongue, but in deed and in truth. (1 Jn 3:18)
Frank Harrison, the CEO of Coca-Cola seemed to understand this when he said, “The only words that matter are the ones backed by action.”
People contradict their stated beliefs with their actual behavior in all sorts of ways.
According to what God said through Malachi, a major way people contradict their stated beliefs by their actions is in marriage. They claim to believe in God but then contradict that belief by how they behave towards marriage. In fact, our behavior towards marriage should be motivated more than anything else by theology, our belief about God.
For instance, the people of Israel claimed to believe two things about God: that he was their divine, supernatural Father and that he had created them as a special nation (2:10).
On your first reading of this verse, you might think Malachi is referring to God as the Father and Creator of all people, which he is. But that universal truth is not what Malachi has in view. He is referring to God’s special relationship with the people whom he had entered a covenant thousands of years before. He became their Father when he made a promise to form a special nation from Abraham’s descendants, then rescued them from Egypt and created them into a special nation of his own at Mount Sinai through Moses.
The prophet Isaiah speaks about Israel as the special people of God in the same way:
Everyone who is called by My name, whom I have created for My glory; I have formed him, yes, I have made him. (Isa 43:7)
And it was because of this special relationship they had with God as their Father and Creator as a people that they were called to behave towards marriage in a serious way.
Today, we who follow Christ by faith are not the nation of Israel, we are also a special people created by God through faith in Christ. The NT makes this very clear.
If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new. (2 Cor 5:17)
We are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. (Eph. 2:10)
Since we are also a created by God to be his special people through Christ, we have clear expectations from him for our behavior towards marriage. Our behavior towards marriage is God’s special way of revealing his faithfulness and the truth of the gospel.
“Just as the church is subject to Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her.” (Eph 5:24-25)
More than anything else, a Christian marriage is supposed to be a living illustration of the gospel, a visible picture of God’s relationship with his people today. And we should prepare for marriage, pursue marriage, enter marriage, and persevere in marriage with this primary motivation and purpose guiding our hearts.
In Malachi’s day, the problem was that God’s people were not treating marriage as a theological choice or as a covenant that revealed important things about their God. And though any marriage breakdowns are a sad situation for sure, breakdowns in the marriage of a person who claims to follow Christ is doubly heartbreaking because it expresses wrong messages about God and the gospel.
In 2:10-16, God uses some strong and tragic language to describe certain kinds of breakdowns in the marriages of his people. He says that we degrade, desecrate, and devalue (“profane”) the experience of marriage. He also describes these failures not as accidents or mistakes but to betrayal and treason (“treachery”). He uses “treachery” five times in seven verses and “profane” twice, which shows how strongly he feels about this.
To “profane” is to treat something valuable like trash, as when my father used valuable baseball cards as flaps on his bicycle wheels. Other examples of treating something in a profane way would be using an antique heirloom dining table as a workbench, wearing a suit or expensive dress on a camping trip, or hosting a paintball battle inside your house.
“Treason” (or “treachery”) is an even more tragic word. According to LegalClarity.com:
Treason is one of the most serious crimes under U.S. law, carrying severe legal consequences. Defined in 18 U.S.C. 2381, it applies to acts that betray the United States, such as waging war against the country or aiding its enemies.
When we fail to treat marriage with the devotion, honor, and respect that God asks of his special, created people, we don’t just “make a mistake” or “mess up” a little, we help the enemy spread a wrong view about God and we betray one another, too.
God also uses the language “committing an abomination” (v. 11) to describe certain failures in marriage. An “abomination” is a detestable, repulsive thing, which is heartbreaking not only because it is wrong but because marriage, of all things, is something God values in a special way. It is “the Lord’s holy thing which he loves” (2:11).
So, how did God’s people, Israel, devalue marriage? Malachi points out two ways.
We violate this picture if we knowingly marry an unbelieving spouse. (vv. 11-12)
Mal 2:11 says God’s people ruined God’s purpose for marriage by marrying people who worshipped other gods. He goes on to clarify that he is speaking of people who do this knowingly (“being awake and aware,” v. 12). This excludes people who marry someone who seems to follow Christ only to reveal sometime after marriage that they do not.
The problem here is not that the people of Israel were marrying people from other ethnic backgrounds and cultures. God is not opposed to such marriages. In fact, numerous such marriages occurred in Scripture with God’s blessing. The problem here is not differences of background or culture but differences of faith.
God describes how such people, after they married unbelieving spouses, would continue to go through the motions of worshiping God, coming to the Temple to offer prayers and sacrifices, acting as if everything were okay. “They bring an offering to the Lord of hosts” (v. 12) and they “cover the altar of the Lord with tears, with weeping and crying” (v. 13).
Since God had created them to be a special people who belonged to him and would reflect and reveal his goodness and nature to the world for their salvation and God’s glory, then they were only to marry people who shared their faith in God. (Notice that parents do have a degree of responsibility in who they will accept or allow their child to marry.)
“You shall not give your daughter to their son, nor take their daughter for your son. For they will turn your sons away from following Me, to serve other gods; so the anger of the Lord will be aroused against you and destroy you suddenly.” (Dt 7:3-4)
To marry a spouse who worshiped another god is, in God’s view, an act of treason – like partnering with the enemy of God. It turns people, including the spouse, away from God not towards him, which is the very opposite effect of what marriage is intended to do.
But God’s people were not only marrying people who did not believe in God, they were divorcing their spouses to do so.
We violate this picture if we abandon our spouse for selfish reasons. (vv. 13-15)
God brings attention to a second way his people violated the purpose of marriage. Not only were they marrying spouses who worshipped other gods, but some were divorcing their wives to marry unbelieving ones. Some, for instance, had married while young and captives in Persia. Now that they returned to Jerusalem, they met other women they liked better, so they divorced their former wives to marry unbelieving ones they liked more.
Here it is important to clarify something. Notice how I said, “if we abandon our spouse for selfish reasons.” I did not simply say, “if we divorce our spouse.” To be sure, every divorce is heartbreaking. Just ask anyone who has been wrongfully divorced or who has been abandoned, abused, or been the victim of adultery and filed for a divorce as a result. There is nothing easy about it. But not all divorces are equal. Some divorce is allowed by God, though heartbreaking for sure, as the offended party will always agree, while other divorces are forbidden by God. It is these second kinds of divorces – not all divorce – that God is confronting here in Malachi 2:10-16.
In God’s covenant with Israel, he gave an allowance for divorce (Dt 24:1). This provision permitted divorce for things ranging from immorality to serious nondisclosures. Such disclosures could include finding out after marriage that your spouse worshiped another god. Even the NT teaching of Christ and the apostle Paul permitted divorce for egregious violations of the marriage covenant. Such egregious violations include abandonment, abuse, and adultery (though even then, divorce should not be a hasty or quick option, and forgiveness and restoration should always be an option).
The problem here in Mal 2:15-16, though, is not that divorce had occurred but why occurred. People, esp. men, were divorcing their spouses for invalid, selfish reasons. This would be like our “no fault” divorces today in which we simply declare “incompatibility” and walk away.
Now, here’s where I need you to put on your “thinking caps.” Mal 2:16 is notably difficult to translate. Many translations translate it to say that “God hates divorce” (Mal 2:16). But there is another very possible way to translate this verse, one that connects the “he” back to the men who were divorcing their wives (2:15).
This translation would read something like this: “For the Lord God of Israel says that he [the treacherous husband] hates, divorces, then covers his garment with violence” (2:16).
If this is correct, then this statement explains what Mal 2:15 means to “deal treacherously” with your wife. It means to “hate, scorn, or decrease in status” your spouse in your mind and heart. If you let attitudes, feelings, and thoughts like this linger unresolved, then you will become more susceptible to actually acting on those thoughts and feelings and divorcing your spouse outright – not because he/she violated your marriage covenant in an egregious way but because you developed a bad attitude towards them and stopped cherishing and valuing them as you covenanted to do at your wedding.
So, God gives the following warning: “Therefore, take heed to your spirit” (2:16). This warning sounds strikingly similar to the same warning Peter gave to Christian husbands:
“Husbands, love your wives and do not be bitter toward them.” (Col 3:19)
So, God is speaking here about selfish, sinful divorce, the kind that abandons your spouse
for reasons of a personal and selfish nature. He is calling his people who marry to keep a devoted, loving attitude towards your spouse through all the challenges that come your way in all stages of married life.
If you think long enough, you can find all sorts of ways to qualify your spouse’s blind spots, flaws, and sins abuse and neglect. If you think hard enough, you can permit small offenses to grow into egregious offenses in your mind, especially if they happen repeatedly over time. Shallow, selfish reasons for divorce are many today:
Then along comes another more attractive person or the possibility of independence, so you rationalize your bitterness and dissatisfaction and label it in a way that justifies a divorce, in your mind, and you find people – even people who call themselves marriage professionals, spiritual leaders, or friends – to affirm your desires. This is the sort of divorce that God calls an abomination, profane, and treason.
When God’s people abandon their marriages for reasons like this, they bring into question whether they believe in God at all. Because genuine faith in God understands that God is lovingly devoted to our salvation and should view marriage as a primary means of reflecting that belief in a real-life way. If you believe that God is committed to you in faithful covenant love, then why would you violate that picture by treating your marriage in a cheap and treasonous way and damage this picture of the gospel?
A key point I need to point out here is that Mal 2:12-13 ties back to the previous section (Mal 1:6–2:9). That section emphasizes the problem of God’s priests, the spiritual leaders of God’s people, accepting and affirming disobedient and hypocritical worship. In these verses, God repeats some of the same language to indicate that a key part of the problem here is not only that God’s people were marrying unbelieving spouses and divorcing their spouses to do so, but they were being accepted and affirmed by the priests in doing so.
I point this out to say that today, pastors must take this warning to heart and every follower of Christ in the church must expect them to do so. It is not a pastor’s obligation to accept and affirm, or to perform the wedding of a church member of their child simply because they claim to love their fiancé. As much as a pastor may want to be nice and supportive, hoping for the best, it is a pastoral duty to teach God’s people to choose spouses well.
A Christian pastor (Doug Wilson) offers this clear, simple biblical advice for who to marry:
Do not be unequally yoked together with unbelievers. For what fellowship has righteousness with lawlessness? And what communion has light with darkness? (2 Cor 6:14)
To this I would add one that is biblically, properly baptized (Mt 28:19). If a person has not obeyed Christ by declaring their faith openly through baptism, then what guarantee do you have of their covenant faithfulness not only to you but to Christ if they have not followed his first command?
Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery; and whoever marries her who is divorced from her husband commits adultery. (Lk 16:18)
In other words, a person who is not entering into marriage with you while leaving a past history of unresolved sinful choices towards others.
Charm is deceitful and beauty is passing, but a woman who fears the LORD, she shall be praised. (Prov 31:30)
Can two walk together, unless they are agreed? (Amos 3:3)
As a loving deer and a graceful doe, let her breasts satisfy you at all times; and always be enraptured with her love.
If we would follow this basic advice in choosing a spouse, we would do well. Unfortunately, many professing believers let circumstances and feelings guide their choice of a spouse rather than being led by clear, biblical wisdom. So, as a pastor, I urge those who are unmarried today to only covenant in marriage with such a person.
Finally, we must look at one more primary purpose and reason for marriage. Not only does the marriage of a believer reflect God’s covenant with his people, but …
God’s people must build loyal marriages to produce godly children. (v.15-16)
Did He not make them one, having a remnant of the Spirit? And why one? He seeks godly offspring. Therefore take heed to your spirit, and let none deal treacherously with the wife of his youth. (Mal 2:15)
Here God gives a second primary reason for marriage, and this should be a primary reason for why any follower of Christ should prepare for marriage, pursue marriage, enter marriage, and persevere in marriage – to produce godly offspring.
Commentators Richard Taylor and Ray Clendenen make an insightful observation:
"Too often do contemporary married couples think of children as an option; they regard their own personal happiness or fulfillment as the primary goal in marriage. This was never to be the case according to the biblical revelation. The first divine command given to the first human couple was to “be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it” (Gen 1:28)."
This is why followers of Christ must marry followers of Christ – so that they can give birth to more people who they can teach and train to follow Christ. And it is why married believers must be faithful to their spouse – so that their children can see a close-up, living picture of how God is faithful to his people.
This past week, my wife and I and our three oldest children were watching an episode of a BBC police mystery series set in Great Britain post-WWII. Though it was a fascinating episode in other respects, it featured a clear and obvious message distinct to that episode. That message was this – that it was old-fashioned and wrong for people to expect women to marry, give birth, and raise children. While this is a nice thing to do for those who want to, it should not be expected as the norm.
But here’s the problem – the Bible, from beginning to end – does expect this to be the norm. The Bible expects men and women to work together to produce and raise children who will follow God by faith. From Moses in Genesis 1 (“be fruitful and multiply”) to Paul in Titus 2:4, which says:
[Older women should] admonish the young women to love their husbands, to love their children, to be discreet, chaste, homemakers, good, obedient to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be blasphemed. (Tit 2:4-5)
… Scripture is very clear. Though women can certainly work hard and earn an income, this should never be done at the expense of their primary duty, which is caring for the home and caring for the children born into her family.
Let’s make an honest observation here. Today, it’s difficult for believers to accept this instruction wholeheartedly without feeling a little bit embarrassed or culturally out-of-touch. But that’s even more reason to be discerning when choosing your spouse. If it’s hard to find a Christian spouse who believes this way, it will be even more difficult to expect an unbelieving spouse to think this way because the spirit of our age outside of Christ represents the total opposite of this perspective.
And in connection with this, how can you expect to raise not only children but godly children if you marry a spouse who is not serious about obeying Christ’s commands? If you are serious about having and raising godly children, why would you consider marrying anyone who is not serious about that very same thing and showing it by taking Christ’s commands seriously for themselves already, before marriage?
Now, before we close, we need to make one more observation, or rather application. What about those of us who aren’t yet married, or those who are married but can’t give birth to children for various reasons ordained by God, or those who have a limited number of children, or those who can no longer have children and are well past those years? Perhaps there are other exceptions, too. If we say that a primary reason for marriage is producing godly children, then doesn’t that exclude everyone else who can’t have children? To this I will offer the following outstanding observation, also from Taylor and Clendenen:
" Although couples can no longer be assured of bearing children (as the theme of barrenness in Genesis makes clear), they are still to “seek” them [children] and can reproduce themselves in other ways if necessary, through adoption and/or spiritual discipleship." (Taylor and Clendenen)
If you marry or are married and are able to have children, you should definitely do you part to give God that opportunity to produce children according to his ordinary, God-designed ways. But if in doing this, you find that you are unable to have children, while you can continue to pray for and pursue this, you should prayerfully explore other ways which are also ordained by God. Adoption is one such avenue and discipleship is another. In fact, discipleship is a way of multiplying godly offspring for Christ that should always be a priority for any believer, married or unmarried.
But those who are married are specially equipped to disciple other people to follow Christ. If you are not raising children and you are also not involved with discipling other people to follow Christ, then you are likely falling short of God’s intended purpose in marriage. Consider the shining example of the married couple, Aquila and Priscilla, for instance.
[Apollos] began to speak boldly in the synagogue. When Aquila and Priscilla heard him, they took him aside and explained to him the way of God more accurately. (Acts 18:26)
Greet Priscilla and Aquila, my fellow workers in Christ Jesus, who risked their own necks for my life, to whom not only I give thanks, but also all the churches of the Gentiles. Likewise greet the church that is in their house. Greet my beloved Epaenetus, who is the firstfruits of Achaia to Christ. (Rom 16:3-5)
Here was a married couple who have no children named in Scripture yet devoted themselves to discipling other people to follow Christ. It is for this reason that you should prepare for marriage, pursue marriage, enter marriage, and persevere in marriage – that you would be able to produce a godly offspring, whether through childbearing, adoption, or discipleship. And discipleship is for everyone, especially those who are married.
As we close, I want to acknowledge that people hearing a message like this come from varied backgrounds. Some of you may look back on choices you have made about marriage with deep regret. You may see clearly now that you sinned, that you were sinned against, or that your story includes choices you cannot undo. But hear this clearly: there is grace for you in Christ today. There is forgiveness for every sin at the cross.
If you believe on Christ, you belong to Christ, and you do not have to live imprisoned by shame or defined forever by your worst decisions. “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 Jn 1:9). So come honestly to him, confess your failure, receive his mercy, and walk forward in the cleansing and restoring grace that only Christ can give. Whatever your marriage situation is today, there is grace for you to put to practice God’s purposes for marriage – which are picturing his covenant with his people and producing godly children.
Today, we are reminded by Malachi 2 that marriage is not a cheap, shallow experience merely for personal enjoyment but a sacred covenant most of all meant to display God’s faithful love and to help produce godly offspring. For that reason, we must not profane marriage by treating it lightly, and we must not deal treacherously with one another through unfaithfulness, selfishness, or disobedience to God’s design for marriage.
Whether you are preparing for marriage, seeking marriage, entering into marriage, or persevering in marriage, the call is the same: take heed to your spirit, honor God’s covenant purposes for marriage, and let your life say what your lips profess, that the Lord is faithful, holy, and worthy of wholehearted obedience. You reveal your actual beliefs about God by how you behave towards marriage.
In the 50s and 60s, my father bought packs of baseball cards at the general store. In those days, they came with a stick of gum inside. He would chew the gum, then put the baseball cards on his bicycle spokes to make his bike sound like it had a motor. Today, those baseball cards would be worth thousands, hundreds of thousands, even millions of dollars if he had taken good care of them, but because he used them on his bicycle wheels instead, he “devalued” them. That’s what we are doing with marriage in America today.
In the 1950s, 20-22 was the median age for getting married. In 2025, the median age has risen by 10 years to 30-32. What’s more, statistics show that there are fewer marriages in the U.S. on a per-person average than at any previous point. Why might this be the case? While a variety of answers may be given as contributing causes, one answer must certainly be made clear: we disparage marriage. We treat it like something with low value.
According to a website called “WhattoGetMy.com,” there are five good reasons to marry:
- For relational reasons – to provide love that helps each other survive a difficult world.
- For financial reasons – to save money, especially by reducing taxes.
- For psychological reasons – to gain a sense of acceptance and confidence.
- For legal reasons – to provide better protection of property in case of a divorce.
- For professional reasons – married men earn more than single men.
The article goes on to point out that married people tend to experience better health, too.
But if these are the main reasons to marry, then marriage is no more important than going to Disneyland, taking on a hobby, investing in the stock market, or going on a diet. It’s good to do because it’s fun, beneficial, and improves your quality of life.
But marriage is far more important and valuable than this. It is a sacred, serious, special covenant before God. It is so special that more often than not you should want to do it, and it is so serious that you should do whatever you can to maintain that covenant for life, even at great personal cost.
In Malachi 2:10-16, God confronts and corrects a wrong view of marriage by his own people. He reminds them of two primary purposes for marriage, and between these two purposes he points out two ways they were violating these purposes. Let’s take a look.
For God’s people, marriage pictures God’s covenant with his people. (v. 10)
In 2:10, God asks three questions of his people. The first two questions reminded them about some important, obvious facts. The third question, then, draws attention to some wrong behavior which contradicted these facts. In other words, the first two questions point out what the people claimed to believe and know about God, then the third points out how their behavior contradicted the beliefs they claimed to hold.
This sequence is based on the premise that what you say you believe may not be what you actually believe. What you actually believe is revealed not by verbal statements but by the way you choose to live.
My little children, let us not love in word or in tongue, but in deed and in truth. (1 Jn 3:18)
Frank Harrison, the CEO of Coca-Cola seemed to understand this when he said, “The only words that matter are the ones backed by action.”
People contradict their stated beliefs with their actual behavior in all sorts of ways.
- We talk about good health but drink soda and eat junk food frequently.
- We say sleep matters but watch television shows late into the night.
- We claim to value friendship but do very little to make new friends.
- We tell others to save but don’t cut costs, track spending, or save money ourselves.
According to what God said through Malachi, a major way people contradict their stated beliefs by their actions is in marriage. They claim to believe in God but then contradict that belief by how they behave towards marriage. In fact, our behavior towards marriage should be motivated more than anything else by theology, our belief about God.
For instance, the people of Israel claimed to believe two things about God: that he was their divine, supernatural Father and that he had created them as a special nation (2:10).
On your first reading of this verse, you might think Malachi is referring to God as the Father and Creator of all people, which he is. But that universal truth is not what Malachi has in view. He is referring to God’s special relationship with the people whom he had entered a covenant thousands of years before. He became their Father when he made a promise to form a special nation from Abraham’s descendants, then rescued them from Egypt and created them into a special nation of his own at Mount Sinai through Moses.
The prophet Isaiah speaks about Israel as the special people of God in the same way:
Everyone who is called by My name, whom I have created for My glory; I have formed him, yes, I have made him. (Isa 43:7)
And it was because of this special relationship they had with God as their Father and Creator as a people that they were called to behave towards marriage in a serious way.
Today, we who follow Christ by faith are not the nation of Israel, we are also a special people created by God through faith in Christ. The NT makes this very clear.
If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new. (2 Cor 5:17)
We are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. (Eph. 2:10)
Since we are also a created by God to be his special people through Christ, we have clear expectations from him for our behavior towards marriage. Our behavior towards marriage is God’s special way of revealing his faithfulness and the truth of the gospel.
“Just as the church is subject to Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her.” (Eph 5:24-25)
More than anything else, a Christian marriage is supposed to be a living illustration of the gospel, a visible picture of God’s relationship with his people today. And we should prepare for marriage, pursue marriage, enter marriage, and persevere in marriage with this primary motivation and purpose guiding our hearts.
In Malachi’s day, the problem was that God’s people were not treating marriage as a theological choice or as a covenant that revealed important things about their God. And though any marriage breakdowns are a sad situation for sure, breakdowns in the marriage of a person who claims to follow Christ is doubly heartbreaking because it expresses wrong messages about God and the gospel.
In 2:10-16, God uses some strong and tragic language to describe certain kinds of breakdowns in the marriages of his people. He says that we degrade, desecrate, and devalue (“profane”) the experience of marriage. He also describes these failures not as accidents or mistakes but to betrayal and treason (“treachery”). He uses “treachery” five times in seven verses and “profane” twice, which shows how strongly he feels about this.
To “profane” is to treat something valuable like trash, as when my father used valuable baseball cards as flaps on his bicycle wheels. Other examples of treating something in a profane way would be using an antique heirloom dining table as a workbench, wearing a suit or expensive dress on a camping trip, or hosting a paintball battle inside your house.
“Treason” (or “treachery”) is an even more tragic word. According to LegalClarity.com:
Treason is one of the most serious crimes under U.S. law, carrying severe legal consequences. Defined in 18 U.S.C. 2381, it applies to acts that betray the United States, such as waging war against the country or aiding its enemies.
When we fail to treat marriage with the devotion, honor, and respect that God asks of his special, created people, we don’t just “make a mistake” or “mess up” a little, we help the enemy spread a wrong view about God and we betray one another, too.
God also uses the language “committing an abomination” (v. 11) to describe certain failures in marriage. An “abomination” is a detestable, repulsive thing, which is heartbreaking not only because it is wrong but because marriage, of all things, is something God values in a special way. It is “the Lord’s holy thing which he loves” (2:11).
So, how did God’s people, Israel, devalue marriage? Malachi points out two ways.
We violate this picture if we knowingly marry an unbelieving spouse. (vv. 11-12)
Mal 2:11 says God’s people ruined God’s purpose for marriage by marrying people who worshipped other gods. He goes on to clarify that he is speaking of people who do this knowingly (“being awake and aware,” v. 12). This excludes people who marry someone who seems to follow Christ only to reveal sometime after marriage that they do not.
The problem here is not that the people of Israel were marrying people from other ethnic backgrounds and cultures. God is not opposed to such marriages. In fact, numerous such marriages occurred in Scripture with God’s blessing. The problem here is not differences of background or culture but differences of faith.
God describes how such people, after they married unbelieving spouses, would continue to go through the motions of worshiping God, coming to the Temple to offer prayers and sacrifices, acting as if everything were okay. “They bring an offering to the Lord of hosts” (v. 12) and they “cover the altar of the Lord with tears, with weeping and crying” (v. 13).
Since God had created them to be a special people who belonged to him and would reflect and reveal his goodness and nature to the world for their salvation and God’s glory, then they were only to marry people who shared their faith in God. (Notice that parents do have a degree of responsibility in who they will accept or allow their child to marry.)
“You shall not give your daughter to their son, nor take their daughter for your son. For they will turn your sons away from following Me, to serve other gods; so the anger of the Lord will be aroused against you and destroy you suddenly.” (Dt 7:3-4)
To marry a spouse who worshiped another god is, in God’s view, an act of treason – like partnering with the enemy of God. It turns people, including the spouse, away from God not towards him, which is the very opposite effect of what marriage is intended to do.
But God’s people were not only marrying people who did not believe in God, they were divorcing their spouses to do so.
We violate this picture if we abandon our spouse for selfish reasons. (vv. 13-15)
God brings attention to a second way his people violated the purpose of marriage. Not only were they marrying spouses who worshipped other gods, but some were divorcing their wives to marry unbelieving ones. Some, for instance, had married while young and captives in Persia. Now that they returned to Jerusalem, they met other women they liked better, so they divorced their former wives to marry unbelieving ones they liked more.
Here it is important to clarify something. Notice how I said, “if we abandon our spouse for selfish reasons.” I did not simply say, “if we divorce our spouse.” To be sure, every divorce is heartbreaking. Just ask anyone who has been wrongfully divorced or who has been abandoned, abused, or been the victim of adultery and filed for a divorce as a result. There is nothing easy about it. But not all divorces are equal. Some divorce is allowed by God, though heartbreaking for sure, as the offended party will always agree, while other divorces are forbidden by God. It is these second kinds of divorces – not all divorce – that God is confronting here in Malachi 2:10-16.
In God’s covenant with Israel, he gave an allowance for divorce (Dt 24:1). This provision permitted divorce for things ranging from immorality to serious nondisclosures. Such disclosures could include finding out after marriage that your spouse worshiped another god. Even the NT teaching of Christ and the apostle Paul permitted divorce for egregious violations of the marriage covenant. Such egregious violations include abandonment, abuse, and adultery (though even then, divorce should not be a hasty or quick option, and forgiveness and restoration should always be an option).
The problem here in Mal 2:15-16, though, is not that divorce had occurred but why occurred. People, esp. men, were divorcing their spouses for invalid, selfish reasons. This would be like our “no fault” divorces today in which we simply declare “incompatibility” and walk away.
Now, here’s where I need you to put on your “thinking caps.” Mal 2:16 is notably difficult to translate. Many translations translate it to say that “God hates divorce” (Mal 2:16). But there is another very possible way to translate this verse, one that connects the “he” back to the men who were divorcing their wives (2:15).
This translation would read something like this: “For the Lord God of Israel says that he [the treacherous husband] hates, divorces, then covers his garment with violence” (2:16).
If this is correct, then this statement explains what Mal 2:15 means to “deal treacherously” with your wife. It means to “hate, scorn, or decrease in status” your spouse in your mind and heart. If you let attitudes, feelings, and thoughts like this linger unresolved, then you will become more susceptible to actually acting on those thoughts and feelings and divorcing your spouse outright – not because he/she violated your marriage covenant in an egregious way but because you developed a bad attitude towards them and stopped cherishing and valuing them as you covenanted to do at your wedding.
So, God gives the following warning: “Therefore, take heed to your spirit” (2:16). This warning sounds strikingly similar to the same warning Peter gave to Christian husbands:
“Husbands, love your wives and do not be bitter toward them.” (Col 3:19)
So, God is speaking here about selfish, sinful divorce, the kind that abandons your spouse
for reasons of a personal and selfish nature. He is calling his people who marry to keep a devoted, loving attitude towards your spouse through all the challenges that come your way in all stages of married life.
If you think long enough, you can find all sorts of ways to qualify your spouse’s blind spots, flaws, and sins abuse and neglect. If you think hard enough, you can permit small offenses to grow into egregious offenses in your mind, especially if they happen repeatedly over time. Shallow, selfish reasons for divorce are many today:
- Loss of romantic excitement: “I’m not in love anymore.”
- Boredom
- Incompatibility: as a catch-all for ordinary differences and challenges
- Disappointment and unrealistic expectations
- Bitterness and resentment
- Financial frustration or difficulties
- Midlife crisis
- Conflict avoidance: choosing to escape over the hard work of relationship
- Family or social pressure: letting outside opinions govern marriage commitment
- Career or lifestyle priorities: viewing your spouse as an obstacle to personal plans
Then along comes another more attractive person or the possibility of independence, so you rationalize your bitterness and dissatisfaction and label it in a way that justifies a divorce, in your mind, and you find people – even people who call themselves marriage professionals, spiritual leaders, or friends – to affirm your desires. This is the sort of divorce that God calls an abomination, profane, and treason.
When God’s people abandon their marriages for reasons like this, they bring into question whether they believe in God at all. Because genuine faith in God understands that God is lovingly devoted to our salvation and should view marriage as a primary means of reflecting that belief in a real-life way. If you believe that God is committed to you in faithful covenant love, then why would you violate that picture by treating your marriage in a cheap and treasonous way and damage this picture of the gospel?
A key point I need to point out here is that Mal 2:12-13 ties back to the previous section (Mal 1:6–2:9). That section emphasizes the problem of God’s priests, the spiritual leaders of God’s people, accepting and affirming disobedient and hypocritical worship. In these verses, God repeats some of the same language to indicate that a key part of the problem here is not only that God’s people were marrying unbelieving spouses and divorcing their spouses to do so, but they were being accepted and affirmed by the priests in doing so.
I point this out to say that today, pastors must take this warning to heart and every follower of Christ in the church must expect them to do so. It is not a pastor’s obligation to accept and affirm, or to perform the wedding of a church member of their child simply because they claim to love their fiancé. As much as a pastor may want to be nice and supportive, hoping for the best, it is a pastoral duty to teach God’s people to choose spouses well.
A Christian pastor (Doug Wilson) offers this clear, simple biblical advice for who to marry:
- a Christian
Do not be unequally yoked together with unbelievers. For what fellowship has righteousness with lawlessness? And what communion has light with darkness? (2 Cor 6:14)
To this I would add one that is biblically, properly baptized (Mt 28:19). If a person has not obeyed Christ by declaring their faith openly through baptism, then what guarantee do you have of their covenant faithfulness not only to you but to Christ if they have not followed his first command?
- a Christian who would not be disobeying God by marrying you
Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery; and whoever marries her who is divorced from her husband commits adultery. (Lk 16:18)
In other words, a person who is not entering into marriage with you while leaving a past history of unresolved sinful choices towards others.
- a Christian of sterling character
Charm is deceitful and beauty is passing, but a woman who fears the LORD, she shall be praised. (Prov 31:30)
- a Christian whose personality gels well with yours
Can two walk together, unless they are agreed? (Amos 3:3)
- a Christian whom you find romantically attractive (Prov 5:19)
As a loving deer and a graceful doe, let her breasts satisfy you at all times; and always be enraptured with her love.
If we would follow this basic advice in choosing a spouse, we would do well. Unfortunately, many professing believers let circumstances and feelings guide their choice of a spouse rather than being led by clear, biblical wisdom. So, as a pastor, I urge those who are unmarried today to only covenant in marriage with such a person.
Finally, we must look at one more primary purpose and reason for marriage. Not only does the marriage of a believer reflect God’s covenant with his people, but …
God’s people must build loyal marriages to produce godly children. (v.15-16)
Did He not make them one, having a remnant of the Spirit? And why one? He seeks godly offspring. Therefore take heed to your spirit, and let none deal treacherously with the wife of his youth. (Mal 2:15)
Here God gives a second primary reason for marriage, and this should be a primary reason for why any follower of Christ should prepare for marriage, pursue marriage, enter marriage, and persevere in marriage – to produce godly offspring.
Commentators Richard Taylor and Ray Clendenen make an insightful observation:
"Too often do contemporary married couples think of children as an option; they regard their own personal happiness or fulfillment as the primary goal in marriage. This was never to be the case according to the biblical revelation. The first divine command given to the first human couple was to “be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it” (Gen 1:28)."
This is why followers of Christ must marry followers of Christ – so that they can give birth to more people who they can teach and train to follow Christ. And it is why married believers must be faithful to their spouse – so that their children can see a close-up, living picture of how God is faithful to his people.
This past week, my wife and I and our three oldest children were watching an episode of a BBC police mystery series set in Great Britain post-WWII. Though it was a fascinating episode in other respects, it featured a clear and obvious message distinct to that episode. That message was this – that it was old-fashioned and wrong for people to expect women to marry, give birth, and raise children. While this is a nice thing to do for those who want to, it should not be expected as the norm.
But here’s the problem – the Bible, from beginning to end – does expect this to be the norm. The Bible expects men and women to work together to produce and raise children who will follow God by faith. From Moses in Genesis 1 (“be fruitful and multiply”) to Paul in Titus 2:4, which says:
[Older women should] admonish the young women to love their husbands, to love their children, to be discreet, chaste, homemakers, good, obedient to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be blasphemed. (Tit 2:4-5)
… Scripture is very clear. Though women can certainly work hard and earn an income, this should never be done at the expense of their primary duty, which is caring for the home and caring for the children born into her family.
Let’s make an honest observation here. Today, it’s difficult for believers to accept this instruction wholeheartedly without feeling a little bit embarrassed or culturally out-of-touch. But that’s even more reason to be discerning when choosing your spouse. If it’s hard to find a Christian spouse who believes this way, it will be even more difficult to expect an unbelieving spouse to think this way because the spirit of our age outside of Christ represents the total opposite of this perspective.
And in connection with this, how can you expect to raise not only children but godly children if you marry a spouse who is not serious about obeying Christ’s commands? If you are serious about having and raising godly children, why would you consider marrying anyone who is not serious about that very same thing and showing it by taking Christ’s commands seriously for themselves already, before marriage?
Now, before we close, we need to make one more observation, or rather application. What about those of us who aren’t yet married, or those who are married but can’t give birth to children for various reasons ordained by God, or those who have a limited number of children, or those who can no longer have children and are well past those years? Perhaps there are other exceptions, too. If we say that a primary reason for marriage is producing godly children, then doesn’t that exclude everyone else who can’t have children? To this I will offer the following outstanding observation, also from Taylor and Clendenen:
" Although couples can no longer be assured of bearing children (as the theme of barrenness in Genesis makes clear), they are still to “seek” them [children] and can reproduce themselves in other ways if necessary, through adoption and/or spiritual discipleship." (Taylor and Clendenen)
If you marry or are married and are able to have children, you should definitely do you part to give God that opportunity to produce children according to his ordinary, God-designed ways. But if in doing this, you find that you are unable to have children, while you can continue to pray for and pursue this, you should prayerfully explore other ways which are also ordained by God. Adoption is one such avenue and discipleship is another. In fact, discipleship is a way of multiplying godly offspring for Christ that should always be a priority for any believer, married or unmarried.
But those who are married are specially equipped to disciple other people to follow Christ. If you are not raising children and you are also not involved with discipling other people to follow Christ, then you are likely falling short of God’s intended purpose in marriage. Consider the shining example of the married couple, Aquila and Priscilla, for instance.
[Apollos] began to speak boldly in the synagogue. When Aquila and Priscilla heard him, they took him aside and explained to him the way of God more accurately. (Acts 18:26)
Greet Priscilla and Aquila, my fellow workers in Christ Jesus, who risked their own necks for my life, to whom not only I give thanks, but also all the churches of the Gentiles. Likewise greet the church that is in their house. Greet my beloved Epaenetus, who is the firstfruits of Achaia to Christ. (Rom 16:3-5)
Here was a married couple who have no children named in Scripture yet devoted themselves to discipling other people to follow Christ. It is for this reason that you should prepare for marriage, pursue marriage, enter marriage, and persevere in marriage – that you would be able to produce a godly offspring, whether through childbearing, adoption, or discipleship. And discipleship is for everyone, especially those who are married.
As we close, I want to acknowledge that people hearing a message like this come from varied backgrounds. Some of you may look back on choices you have made about marriage with deep regret. You may see clearly now that you sinned, that you were sinned against, or that your story includes choices you cannot undo. But hear this clearly: there is grace for you in Christ today. There is forgiveness for every sin at the cross.
If you believe on Christ, you belong to Christ, and you do not have to live imprisoned by shame or defined forever by your worst decisions. “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 Jn 1:9). So come honestly to him, confess your failure, receive his mercy, and walk forward in the cleansing and restoring grace that only Christ can give. Whatever your marriage situation is today, there is grace for you to put to practice God’s purposes for marriage – which are picturing his covenant with his people and producing godly children.
Today, we are reminded by Malachi 2 that marriage is not a cheap, shallow experience merely for personal enjoyment but a sacred covenant most of all meant to display God’s faithful love and to help produce godly offspring. For that reason, we must not profane marriage by treating it lightly, and we must not deal treacherously with one another through unfaithfulness, selfishness, or disobedience to God’s design for marriage.
Whether you are preparing for marriage, seeking marriage, entering into marriage, or persevering in marriage, the call is the same: take heed to your spirit, honor God’s covenant purposes for marriage, and let your life say what your lips profess, that the Lord is faithful, holy, and worthy of wholehearted obedience. You reveal your actual beliefs about God by how you behave towards marriage.
Posted in Sermon Manuscript
Posted in Faithfulness, Covenant, Devotion, Marriage, Divorce, Parenting, Hosea, Old Testament, Minor Prophets, Israel
Posted in Faithfulness, Covenant, Devotion, Marriage, Divorce, Parenting, Hosea, Old Testament, Minor Prophets, Israel
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