“2 Chronicles 34;
Revelation 20; Malachi 2; John 19
One of the signs that
a culture is coming apart is that its people do not keep their commitments.
When those commitments have been made to or before the Lord, as well as to one another,
the offense is infinitely compounded.
There is something
attractive and stable about a society in which, if a person gives his or her
word, you can count on it. Huge deals can be sealed with a handshake because
each party trusts the other. Marriages endure. People make commitments and keep
them. Of course, from the vantage point of our relatively faithless society, it
is easy to mock the picture I am sketching by finding examples where that sort
of world may leave a person trapped in a brutal marriage or a business person
snookered by an unscrupulous manipulator. But if you focus on the hard cases
and organize a society on growing cynicism, you foster selfish individualism,
faithlessness, irresponsibility, cultural instability, crookedness, and multiplied
armies of lawyers. And sooner or later you will deal with an angry God.
For God despises
faithlessness (Mal. 2:1-17). Within the postexilic covenant community of
ancient Israel, some of the worst examples of such faithlessness were bound up
with the explicitly religious dimensions of the culture—but not all of them:
(1) The lips of the
priest should “preserve knowledge” and “from his mouth men should seek
instruction—because he is the messenger of the LORD Almighty” (2:7). The priest
was to revere God and stand in awe of his name (2:5), convey true instruction
(2:6), and maintain the way of the covenant (2:8). But because the priests have
proved faithless at all of this, God will cause them to be despised and
humiliated before all the people (2:9). So why is it today that ministers of
the Gospel are rated just above used car salesmen in terms of public
confidence?
(2) As do some other
prophets (e.g., Ezek. 16, 23), Malachi portrays spiritual apostasy in terms of
adultery (2:10-12).
(3) Unsurprisingly, faithlessness
in the spiritual arena is accompanied by faithlessness in marriages and the
home (2:13-16). Oh, these folk can put on quite a spiritual display, weeping
and calling down blessings from God. But God simply does not pay any attention.
Why not? “It is because the Lord is acting as the witness between you and the
wife of your youth, because you have broken faith with her, though she is your
partner, the wife of your marriage covenant” (2:14).
(4) More generically,
these people have wearied the Lord with their endless casuistry, their moral
relativism (2:17).
“So guard yourself in
your spirit, and do not break faith” (2:16).”
From—For the Love of
God—Volume 2, by D. A. Carson (Crossway Books, Wheaton IL; 1999)
