Minor No.19 Malachi

We approach this final book of the Old Testament. Let me remind you a little of its context. Ezra and Nehemiah are probably at the point that Malachi is preaching, also involved in their ministries.

The walls of Jerusalem have been rebuilt as a result of the return from exile. The temple that was so dilatory in being completed got off to a good start, but you remember the Hebrews became blacks. Well, now it's up and it's functioning.

And yet there are problems. And the greatest problem that confronts the Hebrews at this time is the one of depression caused by what seems to be the inactivity of God. I can think of nothing that creates greater difficulty for men and women in the 20th century than when God seems to be utterly uninvolved in certain situations to which they may have given a great amount of prayer.

The delays of God, they really are sometimes such that they stretch your patience to the limits. And it's not only Malachi and his people who are confronted with this difficulty. As I indicate, though there's no need to look at the moment, you'll find Peter addresses himself to this problem.

As on the notes I give you the reference to his second letter, where the difficulty is simply this, Jesus Christ has not returned. Everything seems to be exactly the same as when he went away. And yet the apostles have been around and they've preached the gospel and they've indicated something of the soon coming of Christ and nothing has happened.

And so depression, unbelief possibly, was on the horizon for the early church. Well, here in Malachi, Jerusalem is restored to some degree. These walls are up, the temple is back, and yet nothing really seems to be happening.

Nothing at all. Where is God in all this? And you'll find the prophet having to cope with this discouragement. For instance, in the 17th verse of the second chapter, you have wearied the Lord with your words.

How have we wearied him, you ask? Well, you've wearied him by making this conclusion, all who do evil are good in the eyes of the Lord and he is pleased with them. Oh, where is the God of justice? You see the point? Those who do evil, who are not concerned about God and his grace and his kingdom, they seem to do very well. It's the same difficulty as confronted the psalmist in Psalm 73, you remember.

Why is it that the evil prosper? Why is it that they proverbially lift their fists against heaven and God does nothing about it? The problem of God delaying his intervention in world affairs. You find the same thing in the 15th verse of the next chapter. But now we call the arrogant blessed.

Certainly the evildoers prosper and even those who challenge God escape. Again, you see the point? It's the hopelessness that seems to have engulfed a lot of the Hebrews because God is not acting predictably as human beings expect him to react. Now, has that never been a problem in your life? If so, then you are a charmed person indeed.

Most of us have known what it has been to be impatient because God has not responded in the way that we predetermine to our prayers, to our own situation. So here in Malachi, at least you've got some help, some sympathy for those today who find this a difficulty in their lives. Do you ever think of how the minor prophets presented their message? The minor prophets did not go into a lovely room such as this.

Even though the temple was built, they didn't go and preach there. As far as we know, there was no sort of pulpit or amphitheater or hall of residence where they would come and minister. If anything, it seems to me that the minor prophets were open-air preachers and very often they would be barracked as they were preaching.

If not barracked, certainly they would be questioned. And this is the vision that you must have in your mind of Malachi as you read, not of a man comfortably leaning over a lectern and teaching people, but a man going up and down the streets, bringing the message of the Lord and sometimes being questioned in a cynical, in a mocking fashion. See, for example, in the first chapter, he puts up a proposition.

He speaks, verse 1, the word of the Lord to Israel through Malachi. I have loved you, says the Lord. And you hear someone on the cobbled streets of Jerusalem saying, You've got that wrong, Malachi.

How has he loved us? How has he loved us? And so Malachi gives the response. You get a similar illustration of this, do you not, in the sixth verse? Made more clear, perhaps, if you're following the NIV because it's indented in another paragraph. He says, A son honors his father, a servant his master, and so on and so forth.

And then, But you ask, How have we despised your name? And then again in the seventh verse, But you ask. And throughout the chapters, if you visualize Malachi going up and down the street speaking, you can almost hear the interruptions. And a man who is a good orator isn't generally put off by interruptions.

He'll take the interruption and he'll make it the seed thought for the next thing that he's going to say as he responds to the question. So that's the way that Malachi and the way that a lot of the prophets delivered their message. They didn't have the privilege that I have of a reasonably quiescent audience going along with a great deal of my conclusions.

Well, thank God for the faithfulness of these men and the way that they delivered their message in centuries ago. Well, I'm almost lost this evening to know what to bring to you. There are so many good things, so many intriguing topics that I could placard in front of you.

So what I did in my notes was just opt to speak about three or four and then I found myself at the end wanting to jam in seven or eight more. So I'll just take a little selection of those and wind up with some conclusion. Why has God got a grudge, or seemingly so, against the Hebrews in Jerusalem? Well, one of the points of contention is the way that they approach to worship.

Remember last Sunday morning, and indeed for the last several Sundays that I've been privileged to minister at the tab, I've been dealing with worship. If you think that I've been riding the horse for too long, you couldn't be more wrong. It's a very necessary subject to have clear in your mind as much as we will ever be able to fully comprehend the marvellous experience of bringing to God the praise and the honour that's due to His name.

Now, how was worship expressed in Old Testament times? Basically through the sacrificial system. Obviously these people lived a long time before the advent of our Lord Jesus, but there was that in their worship pattern that was pointing to Him. And if you were reading the books of the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible, then you would come across, particularly in Exodus and Deuteronomy and Leviticus and Numbers, the concept of animal sacrifice.

When the blood is spilt and applied by the priest to the altar, then symbolically an atonement is made for sin. But you couldn't bring any old animal. Why not? Well, you see, God is a perfect God.

And He requires from you more than just a slovenly approach into His presence. And alas, the quality of offerings that these Hebrews were bringing to the Lord was utterly unacceptable. And so the prophet at this point in his preaching, he uses an interesting device in the sixth verse of the first chapter, and that is he gets the audience immediately on his side.

He's speaking to a lot of older people. Well, what can a father expect from his son? Honor. No one's going to object to that.

None of the priests who would be married in those days and have their own children, they're not going to object. What might an employer expect from the employee? Or a master expect from his slave? Well, the answer is respect. And everyone's going to agree about that.

Well, having got agreement, Malachi now makes the point. He goes for the jugular. And he says, well, if you can do that at this level, then why can't you show honor and respect at a more important level in the way that you honor God? Where is the respect? Verse 6. Due to me, says the Lord Almighty.

And drop down to verse 7 or verse 8. The sacrifices that you bring to the temple, you wouldn't put in front of the governor of Jerusalem as a meal. He would dismiss it. Why should I accept it? You say, verse 9, implore God to be gracious to us? How can he when your attitude to worship is so slovenly and unacceptable? You see, my friend, you must never allow anyone to teach you that God is matey as opposed to being almighty.

God is not someone who you can esteem lightly. That doesn't mean to say that you can't come into his presence boldly. You can.

It doesn't mean to say that you can't enjoy him. You can. But there are certain things about God that will always remain different from you.

He is absolutely holy. He is absolutely pure. And when you're in the presence of God, remember that.

The slovenly approach is unacceptable. And what was happening in Jerusalem was so bad because it was disgrace in the nostrils of God, if one can use such a human term as that, that the prophet said it would be better that the temple door was shut and that there was no sacrifice at all. Now, doesn't that have a familiar ring with what I was teaching you on Sunday? Because our Lord made it very clear as he was spelling out his teaching on worship that there were those in his day who were bringing worship to the Lord and it was utterly unacceptable because their hearts were not married to their intellect.

They tried to fob God off with words. And you can't fob him off. You see, there's an equivalent.

There's a correspondence not only in the first century but in the 20th century to what Malachi was laying bare in his day. What would that be? The 6th century B.C. And that is that you need care when you enter into the presence of God to ensure that in a holy fashion you bring to him the sacrifice of worship. Your words, your love, your money, whatever it is, it needs care.

Now, because these Hebrews defaulted in this area then their sacrifices were utterly unacceptable to the Lord. References made to the way that they treated the table of God. Look at verse 12 there.

There's also another reference to the table of God. I can't quite find it. Is it verse 14? Two references to the table of God in this chapter.

You placed defiled food on my altar. That's a sort of indirect reference as well. Now, the Lord's table here, it's the only time you come across this expression in the Old Testament.

It has to do with a table outside of the gates of the temple, outside one of the courts where the animals were left for sacrifice. And that table is profaned by the diseased condition of the animals that were brought. The table of the Lord is not to be profaned.

Now, you don't get an exact correspondence, of course, with the Lord's table in the New Testament. That would be mischievously using Scripture by way of illustration. But what you can say is this, made very clear by the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians, that when you take bread and wine, when you come to the table of remembrance, then you must do so with a pure heart, with sin having been confessed, or else, what does he say, you eat and you drink judgment to yourself.

The principle, you see, remains constant. Well, we better hasten on. Here is our prophet, and he is outlining one of the great disagreeable actions of the Hebrews in his day.

Let's drop down to another. Here we are now in the second chapter, and the words are being addressed to the priests. Now, of course, in those days, there was a distinction between the priests and all the other Hebrews.

The priests came from one tribe, the tribe of Levi. Levi, incidentally, didn't have a very high rating when Jacob blessed him, and he doesn't come up very well indeed in the rest of Genesis nor in Exodus. It's only when you come to think about Moses and Aaron that really the tribe of Levi assumes prominence and gains fame, inasmuch as they came from the tribe of Levi.

And those of you who are knowledgeable in Old Testament history will recall that when the tribes went back to the promised land, each of the tribes was given part of the land as its own. But Levi never got anything at all. And you read in the book of Numbers in the 18th chapter and the 20th verse, I am your share and your inheritance among the Israelites.

The Lord said to Aaron, and A.W. Tozer comments, As a result, God made Levi richer than all the other tribes put together. From the tribes of Levi would come the priests, if you like, the ministers. The pastors in those days.

And there were certain ordination vows that they took. And here you have one of the most splendid descriptions of how a man of God ought to conduct his ministry from the 6th verse, or rather from the 5th verse, right through to the 7th verse. Let's read them.

My covenant was with him, a covenant of life and peace, and I gave them to him. This called for reverence, and he revered me and stood in awe of my name. True instruction was in his mouth.

Nothing false was found on his lips. And one of the greatest discipleship verses in the whole of the Bible, He walked with me in peace and uprightness and turned many from sin. For the lips of a priest ought to preserve knowledge, and from his mouth men should seek instruction because he is the messenger of the Lord Almighty.

Well, that's what should have happened. But what did happen was completely the opposite. And as a result of this, you get the Lord saying in a very striking, almost in an obnoxious fashion in the 3rd verse, that the very offal of the animals, the waste of the animals, would fly back in the faces of the priests and not go on the fire for destruction.

With such contempt does God regard the ministry of those who break their ordination vows and use religion for their own purposes. Wasn't that the sin of simony in the New Testament? Simony is when you take religion and you use it for your advantage in terms of gaining favor with the people and in terms of increasing the amount of money that you control. Paul tells us when writing to the Corinthians that there were some who used the word of God deceitfully.

They did it so that they might improve their own circumstances. Now, a similar charge is leveled against the priests here. They broke their ordination vows.

Verse 8, you have turned from the way and by your teaching you've caused many to stumble. And Jesus said that if you cause someone to stumble in their faith, it would have been better that you'd never been born. See how you get the correspondence of principles between the Old Testament and the New Testament.

The only explanation is the common inspiration of the Holy Spirit. So, verse 9, I have caused you to be despised and humiliated before all the people because you have not followed my ways but have shown partiality in matters of the law. I think I make reference, I'm really departed from my notes, as is so often my temptation, but I think I made reference to Martin Luther in the notes that Martin Luther would certainly have enjoyed Malachi.

Why? Well, you see, what had happened in his day? The priests of the Catholic Church, they prostituted religion. St. Peter's, Vatican Square. How was the building put up? Well, by extracting money from the peasants in Europe.

They had a monk with a particular permission from the Pope, a monk by the name of Tetzel, and he used to go around Europe with his colleagues endeavoring to get money for the Pope and for the putting up of this great cathedral. And they believed that as they heard the chink of the coin drop into the box that the monk had, so a soul would be released from purgatory. I was studying the life of Luther when I was out in India last year and I was most amused to come across this, that on one occasion a man said to the monk who was collecting this money, have you permission from the Pope to forgive sins that have yet to be committed? And he said, yes.

And so he said, well, I want you to forgive me one that I'm going to do. So he said, all right. He forgave him.

Then he waited until he'd gone away, ambushed him, got his money and ran off on the basis that it was all right. His sin had already been forgiven. Well, would you believe it? Some of the things that were done then in the name of God were absolutely obnoxious and there needed to be a reform.

And so God had his Luther. As in this day, God had his Malachi, this probably unnamed servant of the Lord, for the word Malachi really indicates his ministry as the messenger. Deficient priesthood, he puts it down.

He bravely criticizes the priests. But there's something else that causes God pain. And if you notice, all these problems that the people are confronted with are really caused by breaching the covenant of God.

This business of not offering the right sacrifice, of bringing imperfect animals, that was against the covenant that God made with Moses. It was broken. The priests, they broke their covenant of ordination.

Well, here is another covenant that is being broken in Malachi's day. And once again, he leaps forward into the 20th century because we're confronted with exactly the same difficulty. To what am I referring? Well, I'm referring to the sacred act of marriage.

A man leaving his parents and linking his wife, his life with that of a woman that he takes to be his wife. Now, that has divine sanction to it. But what had happened in Israel in Malachi's day was that marriage itself had been brought down to a very, very paltry level indeed.

And people were not remaining true to their marriage partners. Verse 14. 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.

Why are they not being blessed? Why are they not being honoured by the Lord? Well, because they've not been honouring the Lord in the covenant that they made with their partners. And so the Lord, verse 15, goes on. Has not the Lord made them one in flesh and spirit? They are his.

And why one? Because he was seeking godly offspring. So guard yourself in your spirit and do not break faith with the wife of your youth. Here is one of the most delightful expressions of the doctrine of marriage found in the whole of the Old Testament.

It's almost in advance on anything else. Certainly it's in advance of the teaching of Moses. And it takes us right back to the beginning when God tailor-made Eve, so to speak, for Adam.

And the two became one flesh. So here is the underwriting of the sanctity of marriage tucked away in the final chapter of the... or nearly the final chapters of the Old Testament. That great declaration, verse 16, I hate divorce, says the Lord God of Israel.

And I hate a man's covering himself with violence as well as with his garment. Look at the tender concern that God has with the older woman whose husband now is looking for someone else, someone younger. You notice today it's very rare that the man who divorces his wife marries anyone on a par with his age or older.

He always goes for someone younger. We had a farce, did we not, of a memorial service in the centre of London a little time ago for a man who got great fame in the realm of the arts. And really it was a farce because his life contradicted what was being enacted in the name of religion, in the name of Christianity, in one of the great churches in London.

That must be obnoxious to God. It must be obnoxious to God. I'm not singling out the individual, but I am singling out this wretched breach of privilege, this wretched misuse of religion in the 20th century.

I hate divorce, says the Lord. And right at the end of the 16th verse, so guard yourself in your spirit and do not break faith. Exactly the same term as used in the 15th verse, breach of faith, which is a repetition of the term used in the 10th verse, breaking faith.

If there's one thing God cannot stand, it is breaking faith, going back on your word. He hates lying in a word. And it was breach of faith amongst the people offering sacrifices, amongst the priests and their ordination vows, in regard to marriages that brought down the wrath of God in Malachi's day.

Well, let's move on, shall we, and just look at one more thing before I throw in one or two miscellaneous little observations. Turn to the third chapter and you'll find something else that displeases the Lord, and it's this business of the handling of finance. And here there's quite an argument going on, isn't there, between those who are interrupting the prophet.

I think he probably enjoyed these little interruptions. Sometimes when you're at the open air, if someone will interrupt you, it causes a stir and more people gather. I'm not too sure of the morality of this, but when I was in Sheffield and as lads we held open airs, one of us would act as the barracker.

And I remember outside one of the main pubs in Sheffield, often having a marvelous time answering questions that I knew were coming up because I primed the champ. Well, here are the questions coming. But you ask, where are we, verse 7, but you ask, how are we to return? How can you return to the Lord? Because this is the invitation that God has given to the people, return to me and I will return to you.

There's always a word of grace in the Old Testament. How can we return? Verse 8, not a direct answer, an indirect one, in terms of another question, will a man rob God? Yet you rob me. But you ask, how do we rob God? Well, says the prophet, I'll tell you.

In tithes and offerings you're under a curse, the whole nation of you, because you're robbing me. You know that in Old Testament times it was mandatory upon the people to bring one-tenth of what they controlled to the Lord. That wasn't a gift.

That wasn't a gift. It was a due. This is what they believed belonged to the Lord.

Their gifts were in excess of their tithes. Their love offerings were completely different. God, you see, had given them the land.

God had given them so many blessings and they were recognizing this, and as a result not becoming a grasping people when they paid their due, when they paid their tithe to the Lord. But they weren't doing it. They were falling foul once again on their promises, on their word.

And as a result, because of this materialism that had swept through Jerusalem and on into its surrounding environs, all the villages, there was spiritual poverty. God is no man's debtor. The heart of God is a heart of generosity.

God deals generously with his people. That's why some of the most blessed men financially in Christian history have been the generous men. Because a generous man will give and give and give again and again, and he will see as a result that he can't out-give God.

God likes to be tested in these areas. And so verse 10, Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse that there may be food in my house. 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 you will not have room enough for it.

The Lord loves the cheerful giver. I just happened, purely by accident, and I really mean that. I've got a note here for Joyce, my secretary, in this magazine.

And by accident, I have it on the lectern here. It's the church magazine of Pippin Jay, a rather famous Anglican church in Bristol. And do you know the story? Do you remember Malcolm Whittaker, the vicar, coming here some while ago? This church, which was about to be demolished in 1965, it just had a few months to go, and then the church authorities were going to declare the church redundant or whatever you do to have a church pulled down in the establishment.

And Whittaker challenged the people to give to the Lord and to see blessing. In 1965, they gave £187. In 1967, they gave £768.

In 1969, they gave £2,006. In 1983, they gave £70,317. And their target next year is £75,000.

And the church is still going on, strong in its witness to the Lord in the centre of Bristol. Now, as I say, that was purely accident that I happened to have this magazine here, but it demonstrates the principle that's locked up in Malachi 3. Test the Lord in this area, and he blesses. Bring the tithes in, and he will pour out his blessing upon us.

It's not on the basis of, you do that and I will do this, in terms of buying God's blessing, but rather he recognises our spiritual disciplines as we handle our finance well, so he grants more of it to be handled for his honour and for his glory. Those who believe that tithing is not mandatory in the New Testament, I'd like them to expound Matthew 23 and verse 23, but you can do it later on because I want to move along a little further now. Malachi, as I say in the concluding part of my notes, is well in advance of his time in many of the things that he's saying.

Let's just rush back a little to the first chapter. It speaks about the glory of God being recognised by the heathen nations and ultimately worship being brought by them to him. Verse 11, My name will be great among the nations from the rising to the setting of the sun.

In every place incense and pure offering will be brought to my name because my name will be great among the nations, says the Lord Almighty. Some stupid things have been done with that verse. For instance, the chief rabbi.

Now, I don't think he's the man who's chief rabbi at the moment. The last chief rabbi in England used that verse as indicating universalism. I don't know if you're aware of this, those of you who study modern religions and modern interpretations of religion today, that Judaism is a very universalistic religion.

What is meant by that? Well, the idea of the exclusive note of Christianity is very much muted in Judaism as expressed particularly by liberal Jewish theologians. The idea here, according to the chief rabbi, is that the Hindu in his temple, the Muslim in his mosque, the animist in his little hut, offering worship through sacrifice and incense and what have you to their gods, well, ultimately this all goes through to the one great God. Now, I think that's a perversion with great respect to the chief rabbi.

I think that's a perversion of what is being prophetically anticipated here. Here is the bursting forth of the great and glorious gospel of how a man becomes righteous in the presence of God, and it goes beyond the Jew ultimately to the Gentile and around the world. There will be those who confess faith in God through the shed blood of Jesus Christ, and as a result, worship is offered by men and women of all nations.

You get a similar thing, do you not, in the last verse of the first chapter, for I'm a great king, says the Lord Almighty, and my name is to be feared among the nations. Incidentally, three times reference is made to the greatness of the name of God in that first chapter. If you recognize the greatness of God, then ultimately you move into salvation.

If you don't recognize the greatness of God, ultimately you'll fear him. In the fear that God will exert or get from men on the day of judgment. Let's move back to the third chapter, and here is the prediction by the prophets.

How many times we've seen this in the minor prophets, the prediction of the coming into the world of the Messiah. I really do get excited when I read of these remarkable prophecies and see the way that they have been fulfilled in the New Testament. How do you explain it, again, apart from the inspiration of the Spirit? Well, here is Malachi saying, look, what we've been looking for in terms of God manifesting himself amongst us has not happened at this moment, and there are a number of reasons why it has not happened, and some of those reasons are the breaches of faith that you have committed in the areas that I've leveled against you, in the criticisms that I've leveled against you, but God is going to involve himself dramatically, dynamically in our world.

And here is the prediction of the coming again of our Lord Jesus, or rather the first coming of our Lord Jesus. See, I will send my messenger who will prepare the way before me. Then suddenly the Lord you are seeking will come to his temple.

The messenger of the covenant, who you desire, will come, says the Lord Almighty. But who can endure the day of his coming? Who can stand when he appears? Well, the messenger, who was that? Well, who came before the Lord? There's references, there are not, in the fifth verse of the fourth chapter. See, I will send you the prophet Elijah before that great and dreadful day of the Lord comes.

And you recall that when our Lord Jesus was born, his birth was predated several months prior by the birth of John the Baptist. Who was John the Baptist? Was he Elijah? Well, John said no, he wasn't. Yet Jesus said yes, he was.

So how do you work that one out? Well, there was a teaching to the, according to the teaching of the Jewish fathers, the concept that before Messiah came, Elijah would literally appear. And I think that when the question was put to John the Baptist on the banks of the Jordan, are you Elijah? He was denying the idea in the sense of a literal reincarnation of Elijah. And yet our Lord, when he is questioned as to who John was, he indicates that if you are able to receive it, he is none other than Elijah.

Now, the answer to the problem, the way that you resolve it all, is by going to Luke's Gospel, chapter 1, and verse 17. And what do you find there? Well, the prediction of the angel to Zechariah, the father of John the Baptist. And the angel gives some indication as to the ministry and the personality of the son that is to be born.

Luke 1, verse 17. And he will go on before the Lord in the spirit and power of Elijah to turn the hearts of the fathers to their children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous, to make ready a people prepared for the Lord. Was John the Baptist Elijah? Well, yes, he was and he wasn't.

He wasn't literally a reincarnation, but he was Elijah inasmuch as he came in with the spirit and the power and the reforming zeal of Elijah. And in that respect, I believe that God has sent many Elijahs into our world to prepare the day of the second coming, the second return of our Lord Jesus Christ. And so let me conclude, almost on half past eight now.

Let me conclude by bringing your attention to the final verse of this remarkable book, the last verse of the Old Testament. And it's rather a solemn verse to the extent that some Jewish translators have endeavored to take a little bit of its bite out of it, because remember that in Judaism, of course, you've only got the Old Testament. And it seems rather unfortunate that the last verse, the last sentence of the Old Testament indicates a curse, the curse of God that will come on the land of Israel.

He will turn the hearts of the fathers to their children and the hearts of the children to their fathers. And unless they accept the ministry of Elijah, inverted commas, I will come and strike the land with a curse. Have you ever thought, my friend, what a dreadful, solemn message that was.

The last one spoken before the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ, a message of judgment on those who rejected the revelation of God in Old Testament times. And let it be said that exactly the same or nearly is repeated by John in the final chapter of the book of Revelation. Those who reject prophecy, those who reject what God has revealed through John and by implication the other writers of the New Testament books, then God will take away from them the share in the tree of life and the holy city.

And yet, bless God, that in the New Testament, the final word is not one of curse, but one of grace. He who testifies to these things says, yes, I'm coming soon. Amen.

Come, Lord Jesus. The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with God's people. All that Malachi was anticipating came about through the advent of the Lord.

And I believe that Malachi saw through the first and on telescoped into his vision to the second, to the second advent of Christ and the day of judgment. When all of us give account for the way that we've lived our lives and apart from being refined by the blood of our Lord Jesus, there will be no hope. But if we're so cleansed, then indeed the salvation that we have will become even more glorious as we enter into the heavenly realm.

Amen.