Today, I’ve chosen to conclude my messages on the Old Testament prophets by sharing some highlights from the book of Malachi. Malachi is the last Old Testament book. Malachi lived about 100 years after the Babylonian exile, after Haggai prophesied to help the people get their priorities straight and work on rebuilding the Temple and after Zechariah prophesied to help people see how precious they were to God and helped them understand the amazing future they had in Him if they remained faithful.
Although the Temple had been reconstructed and worship was taking place, things were still not going well. Things were still not right between God and His people. The Israelites who repopulated Jerusalem proved to be as unfaithful as the generations before them. The whole book is a back-and-forth conversation God had with Israel. We’ll call it a spiritual argument. Friend, do you know if you get in a spiritual argument with God, He’s going to win? Just sayin’.
We’re going to walk through the points of contention between God and the people. God is represented through the Prophet Malachi. This was a Word from God to His people. In fact, it was an “oracle.” When you trace that word, “oracle” back to the original language you find the word “burden.” God was burdened to give His people this Word. This was serious.
God: “I have loved you,” says the Lord.
The People: “How have you loved us?’ Malachi 1:2
“I have loved you” in the Hebrew means, “I have loved you, I do love you, and I will love you.” God cannot be unloving. God is love, I John 4:8.
If you are skeptical about God’s love, you aren’t unlike the Israelites of Malachi’s day. Here in Malachi, God’s people weren’t really believing it because their experience didn’t feel like their definition of love. It can be tempting to question God’s perfect love for us. “Oh yeah, you love us? How? Well, we aren’t seeing it. We aren’t feeling the love, God.” There was an accusation of neglect. There was an accusation that they weren’t treated with love. Why did they question God’s love? It was because God wasn’t meeting their earthly expectations. Many hold the belief that if God truly loved us, we wouldn’t experience any hardship or difficulty in life. Because we know He has the power to make life easy for us, we assume that Him loving us means He should, right? It is a false assumption.
Having life easy for us isn’t always best for us. Right? Do you know any spoiled brats this morning? Don’t point, please. It isn’t polite, and it makes the rest of the message awkward. Giving someone what they want all of the time isn’t loving because none of us can know what is best for us except God alone. In fact, giving people what they want all of the time can ruin them which would be a very unloving scenario. God’s perfect love stands outside of our desires and expectations, and we need to be thankful it does because if it didn’t, we would all be miserable because much of the time, we want what isn’t good for us.
When Israel returned from Babylon and the people were rebuilding the temple, they wanted riches, prosperity and earthly glory. When that didn’t happen, they pouted and accused God of not loving them. Are we guilty of the same? Have we come to church and pouted rather than praised God for His amazing love? Have we held God hostage to our expectations? Have we equated God’s love with our demands being met?
Some of us have perhaps been doubting God’s love because He hasn’t answered our prayers the way we have wanted. Friends, when we question God’s love, we have elevated ourselves above God to the point where we put Him in a position that He has to answer to us or we will cry, “foul.” We are not superior to God. He cannot be measured by the yardstick of our desires. The problem is that we measure God’s love for us by the conditional love we experience in the world. In our minds, God loves us only when He meets our expectations. That isn’t love. We want God to love us unconditionally, as He does, but we want to love Him conditionally. We want to love Him if He meets our ransom demands disguised as prayer. Amen or ouch?
God went on to explain that He had chosen His people in love. He has chosen us for the same. To say that He didn’t love them was more than an insult. It was blasphemy. When they were weak, He would empower them. When they were destitute, He would provide for them. When they wandered, He would discipline them. When they were in Babylonian captivity, He made a way for them to return to their homeland. He dwelt with them. He loved them in a way no other nation could claim. It was special.
Here is the second bone of contention:
God: “A son honors his father, and a slave his master. If I am a father, where is the honor due me? If I am a master, where is the respect due me? It is you priests who show contempt for my name.”
The People: “How have we shown contempt for your name?” Malachi 1:6
God explained that even the priests were desecrating the name of God by offering sacrifices that were contemptible. Instead of bringing a precious, spotless sacrifice, blind, lame, and diseased animals were being offered. It was a symbol of giving God one’s leftovers instead of bringing your best to Him as an offering. He was saying they profaned His name when they brought sacrifices that weren’t honoring to His name, that weren’t worthy of His name. Look at verse 10:
10 “Oh, that one of you would shut the temple doors, so that you would not light useless fires on my altar! I am not pleased with you,” says the Lord Almighty, “and I will accept no offering from your hands. 11 My name will be great among the nations, from where the sun rises to where it sets. In every place incense and pure offerings will be brought to me, because my name will be great among the nations,” says the Lord Almighty.
The people saw sacrifice as a burden. They didn’t realize how blessed they were to be in a covenant relationship with God. Because their hearts weren’t aligned with Him as His people, it was all religious work for them. God said, “If being in a relationship with me is simply a religious exercise for you, just close the doors to the Temple.” It was that offensive to God.
Here’s the third point of contention:
God: Another thing you do: You flood the Lord’s altar with tears. You weep and wail because he no longer looks with favor on your offerings or accepts them with pleasure from your hands.
The People: “Why?” Malachi 2:14
These verses are set in the context of a discussion about marriage. Women who had been wronged by their husbands were coming and flooding the altars with tears as their husbands then made a trite, half-hearted, sacrifice on the same altar.
The Israelites had been forbidden to take foreign wives because of the foreign gods that would be invited into the relationship. A spirit of compromise would set in once people who worshiped other gods were introduced into their relationships. Everything God said would result from marrying outside of the Jewish nation happened. Believers, people who marry need to take seriously what God says about marrying those who haven’t surrendered their life to Christ. Your heart may be saying, “He’ll complete me, or she’ll complete me,” but the danger of the reality is that compromise could set in. It did with the Israelites.
God wasn’t done with His treatise on marriage. He talked about how many had abandoned marriage as a covenant. Many were committing adultery. Many were simply divorcing their wives, discarding them to trade them in for a different model. It had become all too common.
Why was God not looking with favor on their offerings? It was because they were disobedient to the idea of covenant on the basic of levels. Listen, when we sin against our marriage, against our marriage vows, we sin against something holy and sacred to God. God is the One who invented marriage. It is His design, so that makes it holy. It makes it sacred.
I love what one commentator said about this: When we sin against our marriage or our marriage vows, we sin against something that God loves. God loves marriage for what it displays about His relationship with us. God loves marriage for the good it does in society. God loves marriage for the way is meets the needs of men, women and children. Most of all, God loves marriage as a tool for conforming us into the image of His Son.
Moving on to the next bone of contention:
God: “You have wearied the Lord with your words.”
The People: “How have we wearied him?” you ask. Malachi 2:17
They wearied God by always accusing Him of wrongdoing. If they perceived that other nations were prospering, they would accuse God of injustice. The truth is, people who ask God to be tougher on sin better watch out what they are asking for because that approach puts them in the crosshairs of judgment as well. Just sayin’. God has a reason for everything He allows. He brings justice in ways we’ll never know about. Our focus needs to be on our stuff and our own relationship with Him!
God: “Ever since the time of your ancestors you have turned away from my decrees and have not kept them. Return to me, and I will return to you,” says the Lord Almighty.
The People: “How are we to return?” Malachi 3:7
The context of this verse is set in the middle of a conversation about tithing which is giving ten percent of your income to the Lord. Anyone just suddenly get the urge to get a drink or go to the bathroom? It can get uncomfortable when the preacher starts talking about money, right? I’m just the messenger. God is the One who initiated the conversation.
It’s a big deal to Him. The heading in the NIV Bible, the heading for this group of verses, says, “Breaking Covenant by Withholding Tithes.” God had dealt with them about breaking their covenant with Him by taking a casual approach to marriage, and here, He is telling them they are in danger of breaking their covenant with Him by withholding their tithe from Him. In fact, He called it robbery. Look at chapter 3:8 8 “Will a mere mortal rob God? Yet you rob me. “But you ask, ‘How are we robbing you?’ “In tithes and offerings. 9 You are under a curse—your whole nation—because you are robbing me. 10 Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house.”
I think one of the main reasons people don’t tithe is because they don’t think they can afford to. According to this passage, you can’t afford not to. Withholding the tithe invited a curse from the Lord. When we give a tithe, the rest of our income is blessed of God. This verse suggests when we withhold it, we not only forfeit blessing, but we open the possibility up for God to judge or curse the rest. Listen, I’m not trying to scare anyone into becoming a tither. I’m just trying to teach the Word. I love everyone who calls TVCOG their home. I want you to be blessed of the Lord. Because I love you and want you to be blessed, I want you to know what the Word says.
Now, God balances that seemingly harsh approach with the rest of verse 10 and 11-12:
“Test me in this,” says the Lord Almighty, “and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that there will not be room enough to store it. 11 I will prevent pests from devouring your crops, and the vines in your fields will not drop their fruit before it is ripe,” says the Lord Almighty. 12 “Then all the nations will call you blessed, for yours will be a delightful land,” says the Lord Almighty.
This is the only place in Scripture where we are invited to test God. Start with 3 percent. See how God blesses that. Expand it to 5 percent. Once you see how God takes care of you, you’ll forget about the incremental increases, and you’ll just go for the 10 percent. He says when we tithe, He will prevent some negative things from happening, and He will cause some positive blessings to flow into our lives.
I believe this so much that I’ll make this statement: If you are interested in putting God to the test in this area, and you want to start tithing, if you tithe ten percent for two months, if don’t see God move in unprecedented ways in your life, at the end of the two months, we’ll give you your money back. I am that confident in this principle that I’ll make that promise to you.
Let’s move on before I see the Trustees begin to gather in a huddle.
God: “You have spoken arrogantly against me.”
The People: “What have we said against you?”
God: You have said, “It is futile to serve God. What do we gain by carrying out His requirements and going about like mourners before the LORD Almighty?”
Malachi 3:13-14
Part of the opportunity we have in a relationship with God is to serve Him, to become a partner with Him in His Kingdom work. We have been called of God and gifted by God to serve Him. If we aren’t serving Him, we are living for purposes other than for the main purpose for which God has created us. Yes, we honor Him by bringing a tithe. Yes, we honor Him by bringing a sacrifice of praise. Yes, we honor Him by trusting Him to deliver justice in the right ways at the right times to the right people. We also honor Him by serving Him.
It should be a joy, not a burden, to serve the Lord. The priests were complaining about the service they were rendering. They acted bored and burdened and bothered that they had to serve the Lord.
Listen, if we are burdened by the thought of serving in some aspect of the ministry, if we are burdened by caring for someone in need, if it is too much trouble for us to witness to people about the salvation we have received, I have to question if we have really received it. Because once you know Christ and understand the purpose for which He created you and is recreating you in Christ, you’ll understand that it is for the accomplishing of good works, and you’ll be eager and excited to do them.
Titus 2:14 says, “Jesus gave Himself for us to redeem us from all wickedness and to purify for himself a people that are His very own, eager to do what is good.”
Ephesians 2:10 says, “For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.”
The people of Malachi’s day were going through the motions with as much enthusiasm as you would experience at a funeral. I think God’s whole assessment of them was to help them see they hadn’t really fully surrendered to Him.
The whole theme of Malachi is return. They needed return to God with their whole hearts. They needed to view themselves as His servants. They needed to fall into His love again.
I want to finish with the ending of chapter 3. 16 Then those who feared the Lord talked with each other, and the Lord listened and heard. A scroll of remembrance was written in his presence concerning those who feared the Lord and honored his name.
17 “On the day when I act,” says the Lord Almighty, “they will be my treasured possession. I will spare them, just as a father has compassion and spares his son who serves him. 18 And you will again see the distinction between the righteous and the wicked, between those who serve God and those who do not.
If the Lord was physically present with us today, would He be writing your name down on a scroll of remembrance? Would you appear as someone who feared and honored the Lord’s name? Would He say of you, “He or she is my treasured possession?”
When God remembers you, there is a distinction between your life and the life of an unbeliever not just because you choose to honor Him, but because He pours out His blessing on you.
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