The Covenant of Companionship

Malachi 2:13-15

by Grover Gunn
http://grovergunn.net/andrew/andrew.htm

This message was delivered at the PresWIC meeting held at Westminster Presbyterian Church, Greenwood, MS, on Tuesday, March 28, 2000.

Malachi 2:13-15
13 And this is the second thing you do: you cover the altar of the LORD with tears, with weeping and crying; so He does not regard the offering anymore, nor receive it with goodwill from your hands.
14 Yet you say, "For what reason?" Because the LORD has been witness between you and the wife of your youth, with whom you have dealt treacherously; yet she is your companion and your wife by covenant.
15 But 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.

The modern world is a lonely place, and there is a reason. The modern world has purposely rejected God so that people will be free to pursue sinful pleasures. The result has been a very busy world filled with superficial pursuits and shallow pleasures which don't really satisfy. People try to deaden their inner discontent by ever increasing their hectic pace, by trying to fill every moment of every day with ever more activities. Yet people find no lasting satisfaction. The hectic pace and the pursuit of pleasure and prosperity, have instead broken down people's closeness to other people. People have never been in such close and constant contact with others - with their pagers and their cellular phones and their email. So much contact, and yet so little closeness. People are like a bunch of billiard balls bumping into each other on a pool table. The irony of modern life is that our cities are today crowded with lonely people.

The ancient mariner cried out, Water, water everywhere, and not a drop to drink. Modern man cries out, People, people everywhere, and not a close companion to share life with.

We are surrounded by lonely, isolated people who are seeking fulfillment

The problem is that they do not find in these activities that satisfying fulfillment which can only come through genuine companionship.

Today we want to look at God's most important cure for loneliness, and that is marriage, the covenant of companionship, the alliance of love. We want to examine what the Bible has to say about marriage so that married couples will better understand what marriage is supposed to be, indeed what it can be by the grace of Jesus Christ.

We also want single people to better understand marriage so that he or she will better know what to look for and pray for in a mate and what to plan for in the relationship.

I also recognize that God does not call everyone to a marriage relationship. But even those who never themselves marry need to understand what the Bible has to say about this most basic of all social institutions. And they need to take this knowledge into account as they decide if they really are among that minority who can live a meaningful life without the closeness of the marriage bond.

Let's now begin by asking the question, What is marriage? What is the real essence of that relationship? I believe we find the answer in Malachi 2:14 where the prophet defines the phrase, "the wife of your youth." The prophet says, "She is your companion and your wife by covenant." From that verse, I get the basic definition that marriage is the covenant of companionship.

Let's begin by looking at the companionship aspect of marriage.

After God had created Adam from the dust of the earth, God said, "It is not good that man should be alone" (Genesis 2:18). The primary reason it is not good that man should be alone is that God created man in His own image. And what is God like? To begin with, God is not an impersonal force. The Star Wars movie series popularized the saying, "May the Force be with you." The Force is morally indifferent. The Force can be used for good by a Luke Skywalker or for evil by a Darth Vader. The Force is an "It" and not a "He." The Force is not a personal being. The Force is more like some sort of cosmic electricity that anyone can plug into who has the right training and techniques and genetic disposition. What would it matter if man were alone if he had been created in the image of an impersonal force? Such a mindless creature - the image of a force field - wouldn't even be aware that he (or rather, it) was alone.

God is not an impersonal cosmic force but a personal being with personal thoughts and feelings. But beyond that, God also is not a solitary deity. Here is the basis for a very effective polemic against both Islam and Pharisaical Judaism. Their god is a solitary deity, a divine person who has no peer, no equal, with which to have fellowship. This results in a theological dilemma. Those who believe in a solitary deity have two possible options. They can stress the sovereign independence of their god, the self-sufficiency of their god. Such a god is not dependent on anything outside of himself, but there is also no basis for personal fellowship within himself. Personal relationships must not be very important to such a god. In fact, is such a god really a person? The more the sovereign independence of the solitary deity is stressed, the more he becomes an impersonal god which has no real need for personal relationships. I would associate this tendency more with Islam. Allah, the god of Islam, can be very arbitrary and even impersonal.

The other possibility is to stress the personal nature of the solitary deity. Such a deity does need personal relationships, but he is dependent upon his creation for them. He has fellowship not with an equal but with his creatures, a relationship like that of a human with a dog or some other pet. He has to look to others to fulfill his needs. Such a god is limited, dependent, weak. This is the sort of deity described in that best selling book by Rabbi Harold Kushner, When Bad Things Happen to Good People. Rabbi Kushner's god can feel your pain, but he can't do anything about it or assure you that there is a purpose in it. Here are two quotations from Rabbi Kushner's book, one that asks a question and another which answers it:

"If God does not cause the bad things that happen to good people, and if He cannot prevent them, what good is He at all?" (page 138)

"God, who neither causes nor prevents tragedies, helps by inspiring people to help." (page 140)
Rabbi Kushner's god is personal but very limited, more like the Olympian god Zeus than the God of the Bible.

Let's now review for a minute. Humanity has been created in the image of God. If God were an impersonal force or a sovereignly independent solitary deity, then personal relationships would be meaningless to us. If God were a personable solitary deity and we were created in that image, then we would be satisfied with personal relationships with creatures below us such as animal pets. But none of these is the case.

Humanity is created

Humanity is created in the image of the living and true God, the Maker of heaven and earth. And this is the Triune God of Scripture. This God is one, but this God is not solitary.

This God is sovereignly independent, dependent upon no one outside of Himself to meet His needs. As Paul said on Mars Hill in Acts 17:25:

"Nor is He worshiped with men's hands, as though He needed anything, since He gives to all life, breath, and all things."
Or as it says in Romans 11:35
"Who has ever given to God, that God should repay him?" (NIV)
God is sovereignly self-sufficient, in need of nothing outside of Himself, and yet God is a personal being in need of personal associations with His own kind. This is possible because there are three Persons in the Godhead: the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit; and these three are one God, the same in substance and equal in power and glory. God has personal peer associations; God has fellowship with an equal; God has intimacy with His own kind, through the inter-relations of the three Persons of the Godhead. God is sovereignly independent, and yet God is love, because the Father loves the Son and the Spirit, the Son loves the Father and the Spirit, and the Spirit loves the Father and the Son.

Thus we read in John 1:1:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
That is, God the Son, here referred to as the Word, both is with God (that is, in a personal relationship with God the Father) and is God (that is, is fully divine Himself).

The only begotten Son is in the bosom of the Father (John 1:18). The Father and the Son are one (John 10:30). The Father and the Son shared a glory together before the world was (John 17:5). The Father loved the Son before the foundation of the world (John 17:24).

Here is the primary root of humanity's need for companionship. Man was created in the image of God, and God is love. We are social creatures who need relationships with one another. The most basic human relationship and the most permanent human relationship that provides this companionship is the institution of marriage. We see this from the original Garden couple. The original couple, Adam and Eve, were

They were a husband and a wife.

Let's have a little reality check: What is the most important human relationship to you? And if it is your marriage, what are you investing in that relationship?

We see something of the nature of marriage companionship from the garden couple's relationship. In Genesis chapter 2, Eve is called the helper comparable to Adam. We read in verse 20 that before Eve was created, Adam could not find such a helper anywhere in all of God's good creation. There is no substitute in all of creation for a man's relationship with his wife. There is no other creature and no activity, neither work nor recreation, which can replace the wife as the answer to that deficiency expressed in the words, It is not good for man to be alone.

Eve's equality to Adam is here found in the phrase "comparable to him." The Hebrew means one who is conspicuously and prominently before you, one who stands before you looking you in the eye. The idea is one who is an adequate equal. Eve was Adam's equal; she was bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh. And yet she was different from him as expressed in the word helper. She was not another Adam molded from the dust of the earth, but rather a complementary creature made from a rib from Adam's side. The rib is near the heart, which symbolizes companionship. The rib is from the side which symbolizes equality in dignity and worth.

By the way, some feminists do appear to see the significance in Eve's being created from a rib from Adam's side. It means that Eve was created not for an independent existence but to complete and to complement Adam. There is a Jewish feminist magazine called Lilith which is "named for the legendary predecessor of Eve who insisted on equality with Adam." According to a medieval Jewish myth, Lilith was created simultaneously with Adam from the dust of the earth, and Adam rejected her because of her independent spirit.

And lastly we see something of the nature of marriage companionship in the marriage mandate found in Genesis 2:24:

Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.
The husband and also the wife are to leave the umbrella of their former families where they were children. And the two are to form a new family as husband and wife.

He is to cleave to her. The English word cleave is an interesting word. I don't know of any other word like it. This English word has two possible meanings, and they are opposites. To cleave can mean to cut apart, as in the meat cleaver, and it can mean to be joined together. The word can be its own antonym. Here, of course, cleave means not to separate but to join. The original Hebrew means to cling to someone in affection and loyalty. The concrete image behind this is a literal clinging or sticking.

There is an interesting use of this word in 2 Samuel 23, which tells of the exploits of David's mighty men:

9 And after him was Eleazar the son of Dodo, the Ahohite, one of the three mighty men with David when they defied the Philistines who were gathered there for battle, and the men of Israel had retreated.
10 He arose and attacked the Philistines until his hand was weary, and his hand stuck to the sword. The LORD brought about a great victory that day; and the people returned after him only to plunder.
The man had clung to his sword with such force and for such an extended period of time that his hand was afterward frozen to the sword and he could not loosen his grip at least for a time. In such cases, the fingers have to be peeled off the sword one at a time. That is a picture of the firmness and tenacity with which a man should cling to his wife.

Job 41:15-17 says this about the scales of the monster Leviathan:

15 His rows of scales are his pride, shut up tightly as with a seal;
16 One is so near another that no air can come between them;
17 They are joined one to another, they stick together and cannot be parted.
This refers to the scales of a monster, but if you take verse 17 out of context, the words well describe the unity that should exist when the husband cleaves to his wife: "They are joined one to another, they stick together and cannot be parted."

You might remember that Christmas special that has been run so often about the little boy raised in the 1950s. You might remember the part when on a very cold day a bunch of boys dared a boy to touch the school flag pole with his tongue. He did, and his tongue stuck to the pole. His tongue froze so firmly to that cold flag pole that the teacher had to call out the fire department to help get it unstuck. Now I want at this point to make a very narrow application. I am not saying that getting married is like getting your tongue stuck on a frozen flag pole. My point is that when you freeze your tongue to a cold flag pole in the school yard, the two are joined together in such a way that unsticking the tongue is painful and can damage it. That is my point of comparison with marriage cleaving. It is like pasting two sheets of paper together. They are now so closely united that one cannot separate them without damaging them.

And, of course, the married couple become one flesh, which refers particularly to the unique physical relationship associated with marriage, but also symbolizes the total unity of life.

Marriage is the covenant of companionship. We have looked at companionship as

Now we need to look at the covenant aspect.

The heart of the marriage relationship is the covenant vow, which is a solemn oath before God. The language in Scripture for making a covenant is literally cutting a covenant. The imagery behind that language is demonstrated in Genesis 15. We read in Genesis 15:18 that God on that day cut a covenant with Abraham. God told Abraham to take a heifer, a goat, a ram, a turtle dove and a pigeon, to cut them down the middle, and to lay the halves opposite each other. Then God, through the symbol of a smoking oven and a burning torch, passed between the pieces. This was the symbolism of cutting a covenant. Normally both parties to the covenant pass between the pieces. By their action, both parties are taking a maledictory oath. They are saying, May I be split in half if I am not faithful to the terms of this covenant.

To marry someone is to cut a covenant with them, because marriage is the covenant of companionship. To use the imagery of Genesis 15 and the two possible opposite meanings of the English word cleave, when a man takes his marriage vows, he is saying, "I will cleave to my wife, or may God cleave me in two!"

This covenant vow is the objective foundation of a marriage. In a marriage relationship over the years, the feelings may come and go. The degree of companionship and harmony will have its ups and it downs. But one thing remains constant, and that is the obligation of the covenant vow. This never changes.

I may change for better or for worse. My wife may change for better or for worse. But my vow remains.

Postmodernism says that I can't be bound by the promises of the past because I have changed. The person yesterday who made those vows is not the me of today. Such thinking is totally foreign to Biblical Christianity.

When you got married, you took a vow, a solemn oath before God and men:

I take you, whom I hold by the hand,
to be my wedded wife,
and I do promise and covenant
before God and these witnesses
to be your loving and faithful husband
in sickness and in health,
in plenty and in want,
in joy and in sorrow,
as long as we both shall live.

I take you, whom I hold by the hand,
to be my wedded husband,
and I do promise and covenant
before God and these witnesses
to be your loving and faithful wife
in sickness and in health,
in plenty and in want,
in joy and in sorrow,
as long as we both shall live.
That is the heart and foundation of marriage, the covenant of companionship. You vow before God to provide your partner, with God's help, the companionship of marriage.

By God's grace, every marriage can be a covenant of companionship. Through the power of Jesus' death, we can take off the old. Through the power of Jesus' resurrection we can put on the new.

Take off the old: that self-absorbed selfishness exemplified by questions such as:

Put on the new: the selfless attitude that nothing is more important than keeping my vow before God, an attitude exemplified by questions such as: And here is the irony: Live selfishly, and you will never find any genuine and lasting satisfaction. Honor your marriage vows and try to meet the needs of your spouse, and the feelings will grow. You will find true companionship.

Give, and it shall be given to you: good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over.

Through the power of Christ, die to selfish living, and you will live the abundant life.