LifeWay Bible Studies for Life Series for June 10: Do you honor your commitments?

LifeWay Bible Studies for Life Series for June 10: Do you honor your commitments? focuses on Malachi 2:1-16.

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My grandfather was born in 1898. For most of his life, he farmed his 600 acres of land and raised a few head of Hereford cattle. He progressed from using horse-drawn, one-row equipment to a tractor (no enclosed cab, air conditioning or surround-sound music) and three row equipment. He made most of the repairs on his equipment himself.

He lived in a day when a man could make a loan at the local bank based on a handshake. He strongly believed and practiced that a man’s word was his bond. Even when times were difficult, crops failed to produce and cash was short, he always made his loan payments to the bank—even if it meant doing without some things at home. He lived the principle of honoring his commitments.

As we continue our study in Malachi, God speaks through his prophet in the second chapter to confront three different areas of broken commitments. Malachi begins with the priests and their failure to honor their commitments to God.  Next, he deals with breaking commitments made to others. Finally, he focuses on commitments made within families that are being dishonored.

A quick glance at a daily newspaper or the evening news would confirm for us that God’s word is as timely today as it was 500 years before the birth of Christ.

Because the focus of Malachi 2:1-9 is upon the priests, it is difficult for a fellow minister to comment objectively upon this text. Essentially, God is giving the priests two choices—either begin to listen to him and obey him or experience his curse.

As we saw last week in chapter 1, the priests had accepted the leftover sacrifices the people were bringing and had offered them to God. The priests had become lax and irresponsible in carrying out their duties as God had given them. Their role to speak truth had been neglected resulting in many people stumbling and failing in their commitments to God.

Too often, we are confronted with news accounts of modern-day priests and pastors dishonoring their commitments to God. The list of false teaching, second-rate service, moral failure and criminal activity gives us all shameful pause.  

For thought: It is easy for us to direct criticism at ministers for their failing to honor their commitments to God. We easily separate them from us and skip past these nine verses of Malachi assuming they only have application to the priests or ministers. But isolating Scripture from Scripture can be misleading. Peter wrote: “But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light” (1 Peter 2:9). As a believer, you are part of that royal priesthood. So how do you see yourself in light of Malachi 2:1-9?

Whether we look at Malachi’s day or our day, men often have used the differences they observed in each other as being reason enough to become enemies or at least to cease being supportive and encouraging to one another. In fact, our focus upon differences has caused us all to forget about the one great similarity that we share.


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Malachi makes the point crystal clear: “Don’t all of us have one Father? Didn’t one God create us?  Why then do we act treacherously against one another, profaning the covenant of our fathers?” (Malachi 2:10).

While we would be wrong to say everyone is a believer, we are accurate in saying that we have all been created by the One God. As a result, our sin against one another also is against God.

Malachi illustrated this when he stated Jewish men who married women who worshipped foreign gods or participated in the worship of idols were dishonoring God. Because these Scriptures often are misused, we must be reminded that God’s command to not intermarry with the idol worshippers was not aimed at maintaining a form of racial purity but rather maintaining a spiritual purity of serving and worshipping only Yahweh.

For thought: Are there things we do today that we have decided are okay even though they are in direct opposition to God’s instructions?

The final section of our study, Malachi 2:13-16, points out another sin the Jews were overlooking. They felt God had deserted them. They gave their offerings almost as a bribe to God to win his favor. But God speaks through Malachi to point out the gravity of their sin as related to marriage.

In the previous section, we saw men were intermarrying with the idolatrous women of the land. This section reveals they were divorcing their Jewish wives of their youth to marry these younger idolatrous women. This was a dishonoring of the marriage covenant and commitment.

Today, we have developed a special term for the new, younger wife after the divorce of the older wife. The younger wife is referred to as the trophy wife. Malachi could have used that term and would have been accurate.

For thought: Commitment to family is under God just as our direct connection to God himself is. Does your commitment to your family meet God’s standards, or do you follow the far lower standards offered by society?


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