Faithfulness in Marriage: Reflecting God's Covenant Love

Judah has been unfaithful, and the detestable thing has been done in Israel and in Jerusalem. The men of Judah have defiled the Lord's beloved sanctuary by marrying women who worship idols. May the Lord cut off from the nation of Israel every last man who has done this, and yet brings an offering to the Lord of heaven's alarms. Here is another thing you do. You cover the Lord's autumn with tears, weeping and groaning because He pays no attention to your offerings and doesn't accept them with pleasure. You cry out, why doesn't the Lord accept my worship? I'll tell you why. Because the Lord witnessed the vows that you and your wife made when you were young. But you have been unfaithful to her. Those should be made your faithful partner, the wife of your marriage vows. Then the Lord made you one with your wife and body and spirit, you were His. And what does He want? [00:03:51]

Godly children from your own union. So guard your heart, remain loyal to the wife of your youth. For I hate divorce, says the Lord, the God of Israel. To divorce your wife is to overwhelm her with cruelty, says the Lord of heaven's armies. So guard your heart and not be unfaithful with your wife. [00:04:52]

So one of the things we learned from this flat out is this idea that we also get from the New Testament not to be walking with someone that's not a believer in the Lord, right? So if you're at a dating stage or dating age, you want to make sure that you look for a partner that really believes in God, that's not walking through this belief of God, someone who honors God and fears God. That's very important to God. Don't ever lie to yourself if you're sinning and you're open to dating someone. Don't ever deceive yourself into thinking it's okay to date someone that maybe doesn't believe in God. I know someone who actually went out with a sickness. [00:05:49]

And so we kind of talk through that, because it's one thing to do that, maybe go out together in a group and just hang out and be friendly and that kind of thing. But to set yourself up where there's a possibility where more romantic feelings might take place, you don't want to go there. You don't want to play with that idea. And we see this from the book of Malachi right off the start. And God is looking at this, and he doesn't care, he doesn't want his people to honor him by not dating or being involved romantically with people that don't believe in him. [00:07:03]

The other thing is this idea of what's happening with marriages. God hates divorce. Notice that when he talked to the priests in a prior lesson, including chapters 2, verses 1 through 9, he doesn't use the word hate to priests that are misrepresenting him, misrepresenting what the temple worship was all about. [00:07:41]

He was upset with them, so much so he wanted to put poop on them. But you don't see that with this. This is actually more serious. He looks at unfaithfulness and disloyalty and dishonor in marriages when you are married, and you're cheating on your wife or not unfaithful for your wife, or maybe you are not honoring God. [00:08:05]

in your marriage. He looks at that with hate. He says, I hate divorce. There's this more serious tone that comes across through scripture from God. And so you don't see God saying to the, you know, the priest, I hate what you're doing. You see that here when it comes to marriage. This is very, very important. Um, throughout the scriptures that we read, the idea of unfaithfulness and some of your translations could have been the word treacherously, treacherously could have come up, um, being unfaithful, that kind of thing. Uh, the picture we get from God is this is a very cool thing, this idea of divorce, but we don't know that it takes, nobody like wakes up in the morning and says, I'm going to divorce my spouse, you know, but the little things of cruelty, when you add them up, it's very easy eventually never going to get there. Um, all the little things of cruelty. And so divorce might be a far -fetched thing, but, but it can't happen as we allow cruelty to dwell in our marriages. And, and, and I've lived a lot of marriage counseling. I can tell you, I have literally sat down with couples that have been married far longer than I have. I've been married 30 years this June. [00:08:28]

And unfortunately, these couples have been married far longer than me. They have gotten. They'll finally get to that point. And it's usually the woman who comes in my office first. And she says, I've had it with my husband. I'm ready to divorce. And I'm like, how'd she get here? You know, how did you get to that point? And so they'll explain all the things throughout the years that you've put up with. And finally, you're done. You're done with the porn that they keep denying that they're involved with. It's usually one or two things. The porn. And then the second thing is this harshness or meanness that is demonstrated in marriage. [00:10:03]

This anger that comes out that has never been dealt with. And so I don't know what your situation is today. I'm not going to presume anything anymore because I've seen too much. But God hates divorce and God cares about marriages. So let me dig into, as you know, I try to keep the messages brief. I want to dig into three things just a little bit here about marriage. But let me say this. The picture we get from the scriptures regarding marriage and the cruelty that comes from divorce. I'm not going to say this. So let me say it. The Royals. Thank you. [00:10:42]

So this is something I gave my wife a few years back, and she really loves it, and maybe you can read it later. But it's an endearing blanket, right, that represents my love for her. Well, in the Hebrew times, it's a little different than the Western culture. Here, we give an engagement ring to somebody, and then we have wedding rings that we have between the spouses. Back then, the man would share a corner of a fabric, a corner of a blanket, so to speak, with his beloved, and cover her with that corner, representing that they're together. If you remember the Prince of Egypt, when Jethro sings that song, Moses, about his purpose in life, and eventually he gets married, and that song kind of shows the evolution of that story. They're using the fabric. That's exactly what they did back then, to represent marriage. And so divorce is literally taking this that represents a unity and ripping it. [00:11:18]

because this represents my mother. And that's what the Lord does in marriage. It's a terrible fool in that. But let's look at three things. In verse 15, Scripture says to guard your heart. There in chapter 2, it says, Then the Lord made you one with your wife, and body and spirit you were in his, and what did he want? Godly children went to their union. So guard your heart. God, remain loyal to the wife of your youth. Powerful, powerful statement. I want to share with you three things this morning. Guard your heart from cheating. [00:12:42]

Guard your heart from cheating. The idea here with treacherously and being deceitful comes from a human understanding, using the word gap, where you take almost like a sack, and you put it over your spouse's head, right, to cover her eyes, so that you can do whatever you want. Now this is, these passages are addressing men, but we, you know, take this morning for each spouse to just learn from this lesson from Malachi, to don't be deceptive, don't be... [00:13:27]

Deceitful with your partner, with your husband or with your wife. But this is addressed to the men. God's looking at the men specifically about that. And so, in a way, it's like covering your wife's eyes, your spouse's eyes, so that they'll see what you're doing. A lot of times, this is what happens in marriages. I've seen it over and over again, where they, you know, they hide things right in front of their wife. The wife would be sitting on a different couch, and they're sitting and looking at pictures. [00:14:08]

And, you know, I'm always, when I talk to couples, I'm like, dude, if you know this is an issue, and your wife knows it's an issue, why do you have that act on their own? Just remove the act, stop it already, cut it out. What's your point? You know, like, do something practical that shows that you love her. God wants us to be faithful and not to be treacherous, not to be deceitful, not to be strategic with these sins. And so we are called to rise among all these things, to be faithful to the life of our youth. This past week, without my wife, I can get a little lost. So, Wednesday night, I've been coming to a lot of studies at Erin and facilitate some things right now. [00:14:41]

So I could walk through it. But the weird thing is, the barricade was kind of still there. You just had to get like something in it. And so I'm walking on this bridge. And it's a little creepy. You know, it's like this. It doesn't feel as solid, especially knowing that it was closed. I'm like, am I making the right decision here? My foot just might go through one of these boards. So I'm walking. There are some weak spots. You can feel it. And then there's some missing boards in some other spots. And I'm like, okay. I wasn't overly confident. That made the right decision. But I decided to keep going. He's not my guy, right? So we keep going. And I'm hoping the other side. I didn't have my glasses on. So I couldn't see if I could get through it. I'm like, if the fence is actually intact on the other side, am I going to have to climb over it or something? But I get there. I get to the other side. And thankfully, the angel went ahead of me too. And the fence was rolled back. But the barricade was there. So I had to get under it again. And it was very inconvenient. So I'm not sure if we're supposed to be doing that. But the fence was on both sides a few laps. So I made it. But a lot of times, that is the way marriage can be envisioned. Like, that's a perfect illustration of marriage, the bridge, the integrity of the bridge. Will it hold up the couple? [00:16:59]

It just takes a few more steps on it and a foot will go through and the thing will collapse. Marriage is a lot like that. It's very delicate. We need to be very careful with the covenant of marriage. Do not cheat. Guard your heart. Second thing is guard your heart from cruelty. [00:18:23]

Guard your heart from cruelty. Again, little things matter. They can contribute to a marriage that will dissolve at some point. So I want to be very quick here. This is outside material that I want to share with you because it's very helpful. It's very applicable to this part of scripture where we're learning that God does not want us to be cruel. He looks at our actions and either they're seasoned with godliness or they're seasoned with cruelty. [00:18:42]

And so there's John Dockman who created the marriage model. And I don't believe he's a Christian. A lot of what he shares, he can easily pull from the scriptures because it's a very delightful truth of God's word. But he shares the idea of four horsemen in marriage. These four horsemen are things that just can destroy your marriage. So I'm going to share what those are real quick. I'm not going to do a strut on that. But I'll share what they are with you. Because if they're happening in your marriage, I'm hoping you can turn it around. [00:19:13]

number one criticism criticism is one of the four horsemen and basically it's when you you have someone that's blaming everything from someone else fighting fault if someone's a character instead of just working on the issues and the problems the second horseman is defensiveness and defensiveness is when easily one just doesn't want to accept responsibility for what they're being accused of and maybe the manner in which you're being accused of causes you triggers you're going to be upset you don't want to deal with it but that is another horseman defensiveness not really trying to find where you are responsible or what you can work on the third thing is contempt this is a really red flag this is when someone has gone to the place where they think you're actually better than the other person and they may not think they are but the way they talk to you the person is very noticeable this idea of contempt in other words here you're disrespectful towards the other person and then the fourth horsemen is stonewalling this is when someone is so exhausted and so spent during their arguments and their problems that they just shut down emotionally entirely [00:19:48]

respond anymore, do not communicate, and so slum balling is the fourth horseman. If these things are evident in a marriage, it's very hard to keep moving forward. It's very hard to have a strong marriage, and you find spouses sometimes start sneaking in different rooms if they haven't separated them or have divorced. They're just, they're having a really tough time in their marriage, and maybe nobody knows what they're, you know, their children. So what's the antidote for all this? Just real quickly, you can see scripture probably in your minds as I share a quick four antidotes regarding these four horsemen. So when it comes to criticism, instead the antidote for that is to be gentle. The scripture talks about that, right? Be gentle. Number two, with defensiveness, accept responsibility. Man, blaming yourself, accept where you are at the falls. [00:21:13]

This approach to a better way of being defensive is just accept the responsibility, just listen, have more empathy towards the other person's anger or what they're thinking about. Alright, number three, regarding content, dealing with content, maybe disrespect that's coming your way, or maybe you're giving it, be respectful or ask for respect. Sometimes maybe the other person doesn't realize that they're being disrespectful, that they're coming across as condescending, so just be respectful. Find the good in other people, in their spouse, in situations, be grateful more intentionally. And last, regarding stonewalling, take a break. That's not a bad thing to not want to deal with things, just communicate that I don't want to talk right now, I need a couple of hours. [00:22:41]

Scripture gives a timeline for that, it says by night, you know, make sure you deal with things, don't let it go the next day. Depending on the situation, you may just want to ask, if you talk about this tomorrow, nobody will kill you right now, you know? And I think your spouse will understand, but it's okay to communicate, hey, I don't want to talk about this right now, I'm just going to get more triggered. But these are things that have helped marriages on it. [00:23:38]

Guard your relationship with Jesus. Guard your relationship with Jesus. Obviously, here in the Old Testament, we're learning about Israel's relationship with God, and that it's important to God. [00:24:31]

And God addressed his marriage for this reason. He knows very well, often, the way we treat our spouse is the way we're going to treat them. You know, if we try to be treacherous and deceitful with our spouse, and try to get away with things, then we're literally going to do that to the Lord. Marriage brings us closer to God. So guard your heart regarding your relationship with Jesus. Your relationship with God is very important. God cares about this. So much so, and he says, what I hope comes out of a godly marriage is godly children. [00:24:45]

Sometimes we adopt, we foster, my wife and I started out in, we want to say ministry, before we became vocational ministers, we ran a therapeutic family model, we had foster children, you know, that we were responsible for in a group home, we had boys that came in and out of the program, many of them came to Jesus. I remember being in the youth ministry full time when I got a call from one of the boys who was older now, he said, because of your example at the foster home, I am now a Christian, I wanted you to know, you know, and so whether they're, you know, adopted, fostered, they're your children, maybe you're in church working with children and, you know, you don't have them in your own home, yet the end here is to spread the light, spread the gospel of Jesus Christ to the next generation, and that's why, if any of you have heard of the board meetings that I've been a part of as a new pastor, you know, I've been told, just go slow your first year, but soon enough, we're going to be able to get outraged, but we've got to look at this next generation, like, you know, folks that, kids that maybe aren't plugged into a home church and don't have God's hands, how can we teach them the gospel and spread the light? [00:25:32]