These three lessons were presented by Travis W. Lewis in 2012 regarding the subtle, yet costly, attitude of apathy among the people of God. Focus of these presentations is intended to alert saved souls of the danger of exerting effort toward religion while our eyes have long since been turned from God.

APATHY – KEEPING COMMITMENTS

Lesson 2 of 3

June 10, 2012

By: Travis W. Lewis

[CLASS TURN TO MALACHI 2.]

1) INTRODUCTION

a) I’m about to recite an interesting statement contained in an article I read recently and which focused on commitments.

b) Listen very carefully, and I’ll ask for a show of hands as to whether you believe this statement sounds at least reasonable: “It is astonishing that 90% of the world’s problems result from people failing to keep their commitments. Heads of state, CEO’s, family members, and friends – every missed goal or uncompleted task can be traced back to someone not keeping their end of the bargain.”

c) Let that statement roll over in your mind for a few seconds.

d) QUESTION: Does that sound reasonable to you?

e) Whether we accept the 90% figure which the author claimed to be true, God has always viewed commitments as very serious – whether made to Him or to those we encounter in life.

f) The focus of this lesson is how spiritual apathy leads us first to neglect our commitments to God, which is usually followed closely by neglecting those we make to our fellow man.

g) So, we go back to the writing of the prophet Malachi as he was led to scold and warn Israel regarding the fate they were carving out for themselves.

h) QUESTION: Throughout his prophecy, Malachi uses the term “covenant”; what does that word mean? For the purpose used in this lesson, a covenant is a binding vow between parties who make a sincere commitment to keep stated obligations to one another. The vow, or covenant, invokes a sacred responsibility. Thus, violation of a covenant is a profound injustice and insult.

i) “Commitment” is a synonymous term that we use to describe such an obligation.

j) And in this second chapter, Malachi focuses on at least three points which involve commitment, or covenant…

i) Our commitment (covenant) to God

ii) Our commitment (covenant) to others and to God

iii) Our commitment (covenant) to our home and family

k) Though commitments are made on many different planes during life, these will be the three on which we will focus in this lesson.

l) We will read the first nine verses of the second chapter, and, as we read, note what God expected from the priests in upholding their responsibilities to Him (verses 2, 6,7)

[CLASS READ MALACHI 2: 1-9.]

¹And now, O ye priests, this commandment is for you. ²If ye will not hear, and if ye will not lay it to heart, to give glory unto my name, saith the LORD of hosts, I will even send a curse upon you, and I will curse your blessings: yea, I have cursed them already, because ye do not lay it to heart. ³Behold, I will corrupt your seed, and spread dung upon your faces, even the dung of your solemn feasts; and one shall take you away with it. ⁴And ye shall know that I have sent this commandment unto you, that my covenant might be with Levi, saith the LORD of hosts. ⁵My covenant was with him of life and peace; and I gave them to him for the fear wherewith he feared me, and was afraid before my name. ⁶The law of truth was in his mouth, and iniquity was not found in his lips: he walked with me in peace and equity, and did turn many away from iniquity. ⁷For the priest’s lips should keep knowledge, and they should seek the law at his mouth: for he is the messenger of the LORD of hosts. ⁸But ye are departed out of the way; ye have caused many to stumble at the law; ye have corrupted the covenant of Levi, saith the LORD of hosts. ⁹Therefore have I also made you contemptible and base before all the people, according as ye have not kept my ways, but have been partial in the law. [1]

2) OUR COMMITMENT TO GOD-GIVEN RESPONSIBILITIES

a) Malachi begins in verse 1 by turning his focus on the priests, “… this commandment is for you.”.

b) QUESTION: Why do you think he would begin with the priests? Because, as goes the leader, so goes the pack.”.

c) QUESTION: From Verse 2, what was the general expectation of God from the priests? To give glory to God’s name.

d) QUESTION: In real life, were they bringing glory (honor) to God’s name? No

e) QUESTION: What were they doing wrong? They had become apathetic (as we studied last week); they were just going through the motions; they had lost their enthusiasm; they had lost their view of the importance of what they were doing.

f) And, in so doing, the priests had broken their commitment to honor God’s name, and, in these Scriptures, we hear God giving them His notice of a curse, or His reminder of the covenant.

g) QUESTION (very personal): Have you been through that stage when your commitment to your own God-given responsibilities…

i) … became a drag, and you were just going through the motions?

ii) … the enthusiasm you once had toward that for which the Lord gifted you or had given you the responsibility to exercise had been lost?

iii) …or when you had lost your view of the importance of what you were to be doing?

h) These priests had two options, and two alone; and so do we as we become apathetic:

i) One option was to “listen” and “take to heart to honor God’s name.”

ii) The other option was to disregard the word and warning of God and to suffer the curse; in other words, just keep on doing what they were doing.

i) Essentially, those are the two choices we have as well when apathy sets in with our lives.

j) QUESTION: Multiple generations had passed since the priesthood of the Israelites had been set in place. With what priest did that covenant originate? Levi

k) QUESTION: Verses 6-7 describes why God picked Levi, and the passage describes what he wanted the priests to turn back to… What changes was God expecting?

^{i) 6}The law of truth was in his (Levi’s) mouth; (paraphrase) I want you to give the people reason to believe what you say because of your enthusiasm for the truth of God.

ii) STORY: For most of my young adult life, our pastor was Earl Owens. During the 1950-1960s, on Saturdays, he would set up a public address system on the Lexington court square and deliver a sermon to whomever cared to listen. During one of those Saturday sermons, I had reason to go into a business just off the square, and the attendant asked who it was she could hear preaching. I answered, “It’s Brother Owens.” Another patron in the business at the time interjected, “I’ll tell you one thing – I don’t know who he is nor if I believe what he’s preaching, but I sure believe that he believes it.”

iii) Iniquity was not found in his lips: he walked with me in peace and equity, and did turn many away from iniquity. (paraphrase) He didn’t make light of sin or ignore what I have explained time and again to be sin; your father Levi called sin to be sin, and, in so doing, the way he conducted his life as a priest turned lots of folks back to God.

^{iv) 7}For the priest’s lips should keep knowledge, and they should seek the law at his mouth: for he is the messenger of the LORD of hosts. (paraphrase) The people should expect soundness of speech from you, based solely on my Word… (WHY), because YOU are the messenger of the Lord of all.

l) QUESTION: So, if the priests, or those who had accepted responsibility to represent the ways of God, disregarded their covenant and became apathetic, what could they expect, or what happens when one party blatantly breaks a covenant? It voids the covenant of responsibility previously assumed by the other party as well.

m) God’s view of His promise contained in the covenant would change when the priests became apathetic to their part of the covenant; and, with that, this would be God’s response:

i) The regard of God toward all their efforts would become as the wastes of the sacrificial animals that were regularly brought to the temple, as were the entrails and wastes extracted after their slaughter.

ii) And, the covenant that God had honored would be made void.

n) QUESTION: Should we expect more from spiritual leaders than from others in honoring their God-given commitments; in other words, does God expect more from them?

i) God expects commitments to be honored by all His people.

ii) Yet, the preacher, the teacher, the person who professes Christ to the world can expect his/her mistake to have more impact; the cost of his or her mistake is just more profound and widespread.

o) “Well, I’m not a preacher or a teacher..” But God may be using you as the only preacher or teacher to whom someone else is ever led to listen.

p) I hope by now that we are well reminded of how seriously God takes how we honor our responsibilities, beginning with our commitments to Him.

q) But God is also very concerned with how well we keep our commitments to one another.

[CLASS READ MALACHI 2: 10-12.]

¹⁰Have we not all one father? hath not one God created us? why do we deal treacherously every man against his brother, by profaning the covenant of our fathers? ¹¹Judah hath dealt treacherously, and an abomination is committed in Israel and in Jerusalem; for Judah hath profaned the holiness of the LORD which he loved, and hath married the daughter of a strange god. ¹²The LORD will cut off the man that doeth this, the master and the scholar, out of the tabernacles of Jacob, and him that offereth an offering unto the LORD of hosts. [2]

3) OUR COMMITMENT TO OTHERS AND TO GOD

a) Israel’s worship was displeasing to God because of the way they had begun to disregard their treatment of both God and one another.

b) One example was that they were breaking their community covenant by intermarrying with pagans.

c) Now, the problem wasn’t with cross-cultural marriages; it was the marriages of Jews to idolaters and expecting the unconverted idolater to be readily accepted as part of the covenant community.

d) It offended those who took seriously the covenant to not bring an idolater into the fold.

e) And that’s exemplary to one of the basic social and religious problems we have in our society today with so-called same-sex marriage…

i) We’re told that because some folks don’t see any problem with what God calls an abomination, neither should those who highly respect God’s law; and that we should either accept it as legal and acceptable or keep our mouth shut about it.

ii) Not only should we not raise either voice or hand against what has become legal and acceptable, we must glorify it by placing it on an equal plane with the marriage covenant between a man and a woman.

iii) And, never mind the friction and discord and discontent that it stirs in well over half of our society.

f) Maybe that’s another lesson for another time, but God’s people have a responsibility to show honor, both to God and to one another.

g) And, when we fail in this responsibility, and when we refuse to repent, God will reject and count worthless our attempts at worship.

h) QUESTION: How does God expect us to treat, and not deal treacherously, with one another? Basically by treating others as we, under similar circumstances, would want to be treated ourselves. (Matthew 7:12… ¹²Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets[3]

i) That rule is part of the written law of almost every religion and culture that has ever existed.

j) It’s another superiority we have over all other of God’s creation – responsibility to God and to our neighbors.

k) Our commitment to others is in direct correlation to our commitment to God, which means that as we become apathetic to our commitment to God, so do we usually become apathetic toward our commitment to our brothers and sisters, along with those we meet day after day.

l) QUESTION: What is our obligation when we realize that we have either willfully or unwilfully, broken a commitment to another person, especially with a fellow believer? The simple response, in whatever form it appears, should be, “Look, I did this (confession); I’m sorry, and I’m willing to do whatever I can to fix what I’ve done to you (repentance).”; it’s the same response as when forgiveness is sought from God.

m) So, our faithfulness in commitment to God and to others, and our fear of apathy, is of utmost importance if we expect to worship and serve God in truth.

n) And, there’s also one other of those three ultimately important commitments on which we touch today, and that’s our commitment to home and family.

o) So, let’s look at how God felt about the men of Judah who were just flippantly divorcing their wives and marrying and committing adultery with pagan women.

[CLASS READ MALACHI 2: 13-16.]

¹³And this have ye done again, covering the altar of the LORD with tears, with weeping, and with crying out, insomuch that he regardeth not the offering any more, or receiveth it with good will at your hand. ¹⁴Yet ye say, Wherefore? Because the LORD hath been witness between thee and the wife of thy youth, against whom thou hast dealt treacherously: yet is she thy companion, and the wife of thy covenant. ¹⁵And did not he make one? Yet had he the residue of the spirit. And wherefore one? That he might seek a godly seed. Therefore take heed to your spirit, and let none deal treacherously against the wife of his youth. ¹⁶For the LORD, the God of Israel, saith that he hateth putting away: for one covereth violence with his garment, saith the LORD of hosts: therefore take heed to your spirit, that ye deal not treacherously. [4]

4) OUR COMMITMENT TO HOME AND FAMILY

a) QUESTION: Generally speaking, would you say that items which we purchase do or do not last as long as they used to? More and more things that we buy are disposable. Often for the sake of convenience, when it starts to fail, we throw it away and find something that we believe will work better.

b) It is no different with the institution of marriage – commitment to spouse, commitment to children, commitment to family.

c) According to the National Center for Family and Marriage Research at Bowling Green State University in Bowling Green, Ohio, the divorce rate among people of age 50 and over has doubled in the past twenty years (2012).

d) This commitment to the family is one that God is as serious about today as He was 2,400 years ago in the day of Malachi.

e) Paul told Timothy in 1 Timothy 5:8, ⁸But if any provide not for his own, and specially for those of his own house, he hath denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel. ⁹[5]

f) That’s a pretty serious charge – to be worse than an infidel, i.e., God looks upon one who doesn’t assume responsibility for his or her spouse and children as being further from Him than one who doesn’t believe in Him at all.

g) A ring similar to the one I personally wear is a symbol of the vows made when one man and one woman stood before one another, and, in the presence of God Almighty, and .vowed to love one another for how long? To cherish one another for how long? To remain faithful to one another for how long? To remain committed to one another for how long? “Until death do us part.” (See the five-lesson series on MARRIAGE on this website.)

h) With no intent to appear rash or impractical, I state with authority from Holy Scriptures that, except for unfaithfulness in the marital relationship, when we break that commitment and divorce and marry another, we become adulterers.

i) The impact of these Israelites breaking their commitments to their spouses made null and void their attempts at worship, along with their attempts at giving to the glory of God; and the priests were hesitant to issue a warning.

CONCLUSION

a) The vows, or the covenants, which we make become our responsibility, and one sure sign of apathy onset in our lives is that our vows become less important to us.

b) Over and over in his psalms, (Example: Psalms 116: 18 … David stressed ¹⁸I will pay my vows unto the LORD[6]

c) Ecclesiastes 5:5 states ⁵Better is it that thou shouldest not vow, than that thou shouldest vow and not pay[7]

d) Scripture reminds us repeatedly of the importance that God places on commitments, or our vows, and the dangers of allowing apathy to settle in our lives.

[1]The King James Version, (Cambridge: Cambridge) 1769.

[2]The King James Version, (Cambridge: Cambridge) 1769.

[3]The King James Version, (Cambridge: Cambridge) 1769.

[4]The King James Version, (Cambridge: Cambridge) 1769.

[5]The King James Version, (Cambridge: Cambridge) 1769.

[6]The King James Version, (Cambridge: Cambridge) 1769.

[7]The King James Version, (Cambridge: Cambridge) 1769.