Scouts Honour

Our reading this evening is taken from the book of Malachi, the book of Malachi chapter 2 and verse 10. Have we not all one Father? Did not one God create us? Why do we profane the covenant of our fathers by breaking faith with one another? Judah has broken faith. A detestable thing has been committed in Israel and in Jerusalem.

Judah has desecrated the sanctuary the Lord loves by marrying the daughter of a foreign God. As for the man who does this, whoever he may be, may the Lord cut him off from the tents of Jacob, even though he brings offerings to the Lord Almighty. Another thing you do, you flood the Lord's altar with tears.

You weep and wail because he no longer pays attention to your offerings or accepts them with pleasure from your hands. You ask why? It is because the Lord is acting as a 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. Has not the Lord made them one? In flesh and spirit they are his.

And why one? Because he is seeking godly offspring. So guard yourself in your spirit and do not break faith with the wife of your youth. I hate divorce, says the Lord God of Israel.

And I hate the man covering himself with violence as well as his garment, saith the Lord Almighty. So guard yourself in your spirit and do not break faith. The Lord will add his blessing to that reading.

Let us come before him in prayer, shall we? No weapon forged against you will prevail. Come all you who are thirsty, come to the waters. And you who have no money, come buy and eat.

Come buy wine and milk without money and without cost. I will make an everlasting covenant with you. Seek the Lord while he may be found.

Call on him while he is near. Let's read together from the almost the final verse of chapter 2. Actually it's verse 16 and I want the last sentence of verse 16. If you haven't got a Bible, all the folks here are friendly and they'll be glad to share theirs with you.

The last sentence of verse 16 of Malachi 2 says, So guard yourself in your spirit and do not break faith. Let's say that together, shall we? So guard yourself in your spirit and do not break faith. Let's say that once more.

So guard yourself in your spirit and do not break faith. I want to speak to you this evening on an address I've entitled Scouts Honor. I might well have called it What God Hates as a sort of a subtitle.

Not that many weeks ago this church was packed with all shapes and sizes of scouts. As the years go by and they keep coming back for their annual service, I'm amazed at the variety that there are in terms of the scout movement. And they come here at 3 o'clock St. George's Day and they use St. Paul's Church across the road.

Sometimes ours is a civic service and we get the mayor. Other times St. Paul's gets the mayor and we're just the overspill. But whether we're dignified in our service by these senior important citizens being along or not, we've always got a packed tabernacle.

And I like addressing that service. I like speaking at it. And I love to see those young fellows and how they made it.

I don't know, but girls seem to get into the scout movement these days. Those young girls taking promises. And I don't know whether they go this side or that side, but they do things and they repeat after one of their leaders.

In my presence, I don't know why that's so important, but the scouts believe they should have a clergyman in on this particular service. They make their vows to the Lord. You can always trust a scout because, well, his word is his bond.

He stands by what he has to say. Words are very important things, aren't they? How easy words pour out of your mouth. Someone has said that words, however, are very difficult, like Colgate's toothpaste, to get back in when you've squeezed.

And there are times when the words tumble out and you wish you'd never said what you did. And one of the most frightening verses in the Bible is Matthew 12 and verse 36, where it says that every idle word, every idle word that we speak, one day we'll have to give an account of. I checked the meaning of the word idle.

It's actually the Greek argos. Now, whether it's got to do with argos stores down the road or not, I don't know. You ever go down there, you see their brochure, and you sort of flick through it, and it reminds me, actually, the argos brochure of a man by the name of Socrates who went not to the argos shop, but went through the marketplace in Athens where there were all manner of goods being traded.

And the merchants were saying, what will you buy, what do you like? After he had gravely walked up into the middle, spreading forth his hands and turning about, good God, said Socrates, who would have thought there were so many things in the world which I do not want? Idle, without weight, without justification, utterly unnecessary. Why could I have opted for my subtitle this evening, What God Hates? Well, because from the 10th through to the 16th verses of Malachi 2, you get a repetitive phrase coming up, don't you? Breaking faith. Verse 10.

Breaking faith. Verse 11. Verse 14.

Breaking faith. And so forth. Right down to the 16th verse, which is actually a repeat of the 15th.

Guard yourself in your spirit and do not break faith. Now what that really means is, don't say something that you don't believe. Don't get involved in some religious commitment that you didn't mean.

And if you have spilt words that you didn't really mean, then ask that those words may be forgiven you by God. And if you've gone into a vow which you've broken, then ask the Lord to repair the damage that you have caused. In other words, it seems to me that this passage of Scripture, plucked from the dusty pages of the Old Testament, is really the scout's motto, expanded in the Hebrew language, with an unknown prophet coming to a people who are constantly squeezing out words and saying, hold it men, women, you're breaking faith.

You're doing something which displeases God. Idle words, you're spraying them out. And because there is no truth to a great deal of what you're saying, there's no reality behind your religious practices, you're coming under deeper and deeper condemnation.

Before you read very far into the book of Genesis, you discover people having sinned, wanting their relationship with the Lord repaired. Now the way that we would express that in Old Testament terminology is a little different from the way that we would explain it in the New. The Old Testament underlines the fact that people would covenant before the Lord to be different in the way that they live.

In the New Testament we talk about salvation and redemption and regeneration and so forth. But that Old Testament concept is actually well linked into the New and it becomes clear if you listen to my explanation. When the Jews talked about making a covenant, they had a special word.

And the word actually had some relationship to a sharp edge. It was the word cut. You cut a covenant.

Way back in the Old Testament you will discover that God comes in a very mysterious form into the area where Abraham is. Prior to God manifesting himself to Abraham, that old servant of the Lord has taken animals and killed them. And he's cut the animals and he's laid them one on one side, one part on one side of the path and the other on the other side correspondingly.

And Abraham walks up and down this path. The slain animals in one sense symbolize the shedding of blood for the sins of Abraham. But there's more to cutting a covenant than this.

If you were to go to the prophecy of Jeremiah chapter 34 and verse 18, you would discover there the prophet saying that when a man makes a covenant with God in Old Testament times he's saying this, the Lord do to me and more so if I do not keep the promise that I have just enacted. In other words, as these animals have been slain and dismembered, the Lord do to me and more so what's happened to them if I don't keep my word. When you make a covenant with Almighty God in Old Testament times, then you enter into a most solemn transaction.

Now when our Lord Jesus Christ comes on earth, you remember almost the last thing that he does before he's arrested and taken to Calvary and done to death is he spreads a table, the Passover meal, which refers back to God's redemption of the Israelites thousands of years ago. But Jesus changes the significance. You've been to the communion service many times? What have you seen me doing? Well, enacting again what happened the day when Jesus transferred the meaning of the Passover meal into a higher key.

And we now call it the Lord's Supper. He takes bread and he takes wine and he says this bread, it stands for my body. It's going to be broken for you.

This wine, it stands for my blood. It's going to be shed for you. The covenant that God the Father makes with you is this, that as I die on the cross vicariously, that means on your behalf, so your sins will be forgiven.

And any man who has entered into that covenant, which Jesus has cut with the Father on our behalf, is in effect saying from that moment on, the moment of my committal of my life to Jesus, I die to myself and I start to live to the praise and to the honor of Almighty God. Now you may not have expressed it quite like that when you became a Christian. Maybe you haven't become a Christian but you're beginning to understand a little of the gospel and no one's ever expressed it quite like that.

But that's what it means. Becoming a Christian is the most important thing in the world. I say that without qualification at all.

It's entering into the covenant and the benefits of the covenant that the Son of Man, Jesus Christ, has cut with Almighty God on behalf of people like ourselves. Now let's go back to old Malachi. Because you see, he's burst in on the scene of these Old Testament Hebrews and he has something blunt to say.

And it's this. You've broken covenant. There's no honor in the promises that you have made to the Lord.

You have broken them so much that mingled with your words. There is no honor at all. Judah has broken faith.

Broken faith. Broken faith. Historically, and it's well for us to spend a moment or two in this little red minor prophet, historically the charge was this.

That those Old Testament Hebrews had violated one of the responsibilities that were theirs as people of God and they had gone after other wives. They had made marriages which did not have the blessings of God upon them. If you read the 10th and the 11th verses, it makes it quite clear.

The 11th says, Judah has broken faith. A detestable thing has been committed in Israel and in Jerusalem. Judah has desecrated the sanctuary the Lord loves by marrying the daughter of a foreign God.

Now listen, it wasn't wrong for Old Testament Hebrews to marry outside their race. Boaz married Ruth and she was a Moabites. Yes, what was wrong was for a man to marry a non-Jewish woman who had not changed her religious beliefs and come to an acknowledgement that Jehovah is the only God.

The New Testament tells you this, are you listening youngsters, those of you who are not married, that it is wrong for you to be unequally yoked. If you have committed yourself to Jesus Christ, if you have entered into that covenant that he has cut with almighty God, then it is the declared teaching of the New Testament that the person who is to accompany you down the years of your life must be somebody who also confesses Jesus as Lord. So the first charge that Malachi directs against these Old Testament Jews is that they have broken the larger responsibilities in the area of covenant.

But more than this, he goes on to develop the theme in the twelfth and the thirteenth verses that these people have not only wed outside the redeemed community but some of them have played fast and loose with the marriages that they had already enacted. They have gone after wives that are non-Jewish and moreover they have put away from themselves their original wives. Verse fourteen, 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.

One of the things that this word of God makes very clear in this particular passage is that he puts a high premium on us keeping covenants, not only in the general sense but in the more specific sense of our commitment to our partners. And when these Jewish people dispensed with the partnership of their former wives on behalf of a non-Jewish younger partner, God was incensed. It wasn't a question of scouts honor as far as they were concerned.

There was no honor at all. They had spilled idle words of commitment of covenant to the Lord and to their wives and they had proved to be false, as idle words always do. And as a result, God is incensed.

God is annoyed. God is loved, yes. But God can get angry.

The 15th verse of this second chapter underlines the teaching of Genesis chapter 2 and the last few verses, the sanctity of marriage. God made man and woman, flesh and spirit. He brings the two together so they become one.

Why? So that godly offspring can be the result of their union. And when marriage is held at a low price, as far as the Old Testament Hebrews are concerned, God is angry. And when marriages start to break up in the 20th century, God gets distressed.

Not because there's a breach of covenant alone, but because of the hurt, the injury, the knock-on problems, the broken-hearted elderly wife, for people rarely cut loose of their marriage convictions and marry someone older than themselves. And the Lord despises the attitude of people who have made a marriage contract and then they rescind that contract and go on to someone else. To the extent that when God looks down upon the Hebrews in the time that Malachi is bringing this prophecy, he comes to a very high point in expressing his emotions and he says in verse 16, I hate divorce.

Because divorce is basically the breach of a covenant. And ideally there should never be any such things as divorce. But the teaching of Malachi in this particular incident is illustrative of God's attitude to the breach of covenant in general senses as well as in the specific sense.

So the question comes to you and to me this hot, almost summery evening. To what degree are the words that fall from our mouths, the religious practices that we engage in, to what degree do we live up to them? Are we guarding ourselves in our spirits so we do not break faith? One thing that God hates more than anything else, a breach of faith. The Greeks taught that words were immortal.

And in one sense their fanciful speculation has got some scientific truth behind it. You never lose sound. It's out there somewhere in the universe.

Words are the particular gift that God grants to the human race that delineates them from all other animals with the exception of parrots. And they don't know what they're talking about, they mimic. With all respect to parrots.

And when we use part of that image of God which is fractured and broken in our makeup because of sin, but nonetheless when we use the gift of words and we come before the Lord and we come before our brothers and sisters and we say those things that we should not say because we don't intend to keep them, then God says, I dislike what you're doing. I will bring you to book for every agos, for every unnecessary word. Guard yourself in your spirit and do not break faith.

I read a story earlier last week about a Scotsman who was ministering in America and he said he had a strange experience when last he was visiting Edinburgh. He went through a cemetery which must be fairly downtown. And as he went through the cemetery he discovered that it was really a bazaar, it was a market.

On top of the graves the store holders had got their various bits and pieces on sale. He goes on to say this, the experience resurrected in me, the only personal fear I can readily identify, the fear of an insignificant life. This fear has nothing to do with being somebody in the usual sense, nor am I referring to the tedious commonplace that life is meaningless.

My fear is different and can be simply stated. Will it matter once I am gone that I was ever here? Will it matter when I've gone that I was ever here? The graves, you see, they were covered by the merchandise of the folk who were trying to make a quick pound or two in that downtown graveyard. And it seemed to him to be such an offence over against the decaying remains of those who once were alive and their bodies were in the grave.

What significance, he says, has my life? Will it matter once I am gone that I was ever here? Do you know the greatest thing, my dear young and older friend, the greatest thing that you have to preserve that will be your lasting memorial on planet Earth is the retention of your integrity. The retention of your integrity. Keeping your word.

Not breaking faith. Not doing an esaur and selling your inheritance for a bowl of soup. Keeping Christ with Almighty God.

Endeavouring to deliver what you promised to him and also to your fellow brothers and sisters. Staying true to the covenant that has been cut by the Lord Jesus Christ on your behalf. The scout service is a very meaningful one.

Ray New generally shares it with me. I don't think he was ever a scout but he does very well on the organ and we have all the traditional hymns, I vow to thee my country and the scout hymn which I can never remember in Jerusalem or what have you. And then Ray goes off on to give me oil in my lamp, keep me burning.

And in one sense I'm glad that he does because between us we can handle this service and bringing some very spiritual truths as well and pitch them at the level that the scouts can understand. You see it's most necessary if you're making a vow to Almighty God that you know the Spirit of God pouring through into your life, giving you the ability to live up to the vow that you have made, the vow that you have enacted. Now I'm asking you as those scouts wanted to guard their commitment this year on an even deeper level because you've probably got a greater understanding than a lot of those kids have.

Are you living up to this text from this obscure passage of Malachi? Guard yourself in your spirit. Are you guarding your spirit so you don't break faith? You say how do people break faith? Well I suggest one or two areas which you can take and examine yourself as you go down this particular road. Do you allow other priorities to come in over against the priority that God has upon your life? This was the problem with those Old Testament Hebrews.

They allowed their desire for God to be eclipsed by their desire for sexual thrills and by other relationships which were forbidden by the Lord God. Says somebody it is perhaps the greatest sin of the greatest number of Christians that in so many details of life they put God second. You can never guard yourself in your spirit if someone else and something else takes number one place.

Jesus said to the rich young ruler you can't follow me unless you're prepared to put all your eggs into one basket and sell them if necessary in order to be my disciple. The apostle Paul says that when he was viewing the whole business of making a commitment to the Lord Jesus Christ all the things that had had a hold for him, a fascination down the years of his life up to that point they become as dung. They smelt and he said this one thing I do there is only one particular purpose now that dominates the horizon of my life and it is that I might live for Jesus Christ.

Now I'm not asking you are you achieving it? What I'm asking you is do you from your heart of hearts desire it? Get your priorities in order. Jumbled priorities cause the breach of faith. People break faith by allowing self-indulgence.

David was at home when he should have been at the forefront of the battle with his army. He was languishing there in Jerusalem when he should have been laboring as far as being the senior, the chief citizen in Israel was concerned. And as a result of this as he whiled away the hours on the flat roof of his palace of his house in Jerusalem he sees a woman bathing.

And all the red blood corpuscles or whatever it is that starts a man to desire a woman get moving with great rapidity. And David breaks faith. You know the story, I don't need to go into it.

It's there a thousand times on almost every television play. But the problem is they don't spell out the disaster and the treachery and all that happens as a result. He broke faith with his wife, right? He broke faith with his soldiers.

He broke faith with the nation of Israel. He broke faith with his God. Credibility to the war.

Self-indulgence. There was an on-off switch. But he refused to turn it as so many of us refuse to turn the switches literally speaking on our televisions.

And what we are reading. No wonder our level of Christianity is so mediocre when we don't stand guard over our spirit. We're not the spiritual giants that some of us reckon ourselves to be.

We're weak people. And as a result of our weakness we should be backing off from those things which we know will ultimately cripple us because we don't have the reserves to be able to cope with the particular threat of temptation that they represent. People break faith as they allow other priorities instead of the Lord God as number one.

As they make room for self-indulgence and as they have a higher assessment of self than they really warrant. Lord, they may let you down. They come from Galilee as I come from Galilee.

But Lord, I was the chief fisherman. I ran the business. The whole outfit was mine.

With me you're doing with a sort of supercharged disciple. You've got it right in your predictions. The others will let you go and deny you.

But not me. Not me. And then Peter went and broke faith, broke faith with his Lord Jesus Christ, broke faith with his fellow disciples, broke faith as far as his own personal credibility was concerned as he denied with oaths and cursings to a slip of a girl in the high priest's courtyard that he was an accomplice of Jesus Christ and he went out into the darkness and there was no black in the heart of Peter on that occasion then the night was dark.

The breach of faith. How does restoration come? Restoration comes, my friend, in the same way as it came for David when he asks the Lord God in Psalm 51 verse 10 creating me a pure heart, oh God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. What we need more than we really appreciate is for some good friend to bluntly speak the word of God more frequently into our lives.

Proverbs says, wounds from a friend are better than kisses from an enemy. Open rebuke is better than hidden love. That's Proverbs 27 verses 5 and 6. I've inverted the order of the verses.

There was an old fashioned salvationist in the 1880s and he was very concerned about the credibility of the Salvation Army movement as it was being exported from the United Kingdom to Latin America and elsewhere. There were a number of ladies setting sail for South America and he was heard to pray this, Lord, these ladies are going to America to preach the gospel. If they are fully given up to thee, be with them and bless them and grant them success.

But if they're not to be faithful, drown them, Lord, drown them. Well, when you've got prayer partners like that, there comes a time, my dear friends, when we need somebody to speak into our lives the word of God and say, hey, I'm telling you this because I love you. The hardest thing for me to do as a pastor is to talk to some one person, a person, from this beloved fellowship and say, look, you're out of order.

You're askew in this particular area. You see, you preach it from a pulpit and the very size of the congregation deflects the impact of the word from an individual because we're all saying, preach it, brother, they need it. Whereas perhaps it's, one, preach it, brother, you need it and two, I'm close behind you.

The restoration of your spirit comes as you respond to someone speaking into your heart the word of God. The Apostle Paul tells us to put on the whole armor of God and when we put on the whole armor of God, he says, then we are to stand guard. We are to be alert and always keep on praying for all the saints.

Peter, who blew it on one occasion, writes in the last chapter of his first letter, be self-controlled and alert, realizing that your enemy, the devil, stalks around like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour. And through my address, but here was the burden, I want us all on Scouts honor to reenact the covenant that we've made with our Lord Jesus or to make it for the first time there is nothing more important than this, than that you should commit your life to God through the death of His Son. There's nothing more important but that you should know the fullness of the Spirit and be able to live a life that is complimentary to the commitment that you have made.

Now look, I am the president of the society of people who from time to time have blown it in their Christian lives. I express that colloquially but I don't apologize. I am not where I ideally want to be but at least I'm traveling down the road and I'm asking you as fellow Sojourners tonight to stand guard of your spirit by God's grace not to break faith to ask the Lord to keep you pure and holy honorable in all your relationships as you come to the cross as you go into the upper room and know the mighty endowment of power from on high.

Let's pray. The old Salvationist said, sink him Lord or drown him Lord because he was so concerned for the honor of the Gospel. And maybe we'd want to qualify his words and perhaps he did himself.

But we all recognize the great need, don't we? To be more honorable and upright in our relationships with the Lord and with one another. So first of all I want to pray for everyone who feels that in some way they've broken faith. If you confess your sins he's faithful and just to forgive you your sins to cleanse you from all unrighteousness.

The blood of Jesus Christ, God's Son cleanses us from all sin. Father, grant absolution to all those who this night are sorry for Argos' words. Now I want to pray for any who are having problems in the area of their mind and imagination who are lacking a spirit of self-control.

You fellows know where I'm coming in at. And maybe there's an overspill to some ladies. Father, we believe that you make it possible for us to be strong in the Lord and in the power of his might.

So I want in this prayer to come against those weak areas in personalities in this congregation. Those chinks in the armor into which Satan gets and I want your Lord to strengthen and stiffen resolve to improve credibility to restore integrity. I know such love paying the debt I owe of Jesus such love such love stealing my restlessness such love tempting death such love showing me holiness of Jesus such love such love streaming through history of life to me such love