Malachi

Notes
Transcript
Malachi
Malachi
Malachi 1 “This is an oracle, the Lord’s message to Israel through Malachi: “I have shown love to you,” says the Lord, but you say, “How have you shown love to us?” “Esau was Jacob’s brother,” the Lord explains, “yet I chose Jacob and rejected Esau. I turned Esau’s mountains into a deserted wasteland and gave his territory to the wild jackals.” Edom says, “Though we are devastated, we will once again build the ruined places.” So the Lord of Heaven’s Armies responds, “They indeed may build, but I will overthrow. They will be known as the land of evil, the people with whom the Lord is permanently displeased. Your eyes will see it, and then you will say, ‘May the Lord be magnified even beyond the border of Israel!’ ” “A son naturally honors his father and a slave respects his master. If I am your father, where is my honor? If I am your master, where is my respect? The Lord of Heaven’s Armies asks you this, you priests who make light of my name! But you reply, ‘How have we made light of your name?’ Y…”
Exordium.
Introduction to the Sermon
Narratio
Dysfunctional covenant relationship Malachi 1:1-5.
Malachi 1:1-5
Malachi 1:1-5
This is an oracle, the Lord’s message to Israel through Malachi:
“I have shown love to you,” says the Lord, but you say, “How have you shown love to us?” “Esau was Jacob’s brother,” the Lord explains, “yet I chose Jacob
and rejected Esau. I turned Esau’s mountains into a deserted wasteland and gave his territory to the wild jackals.”
Edom says, “Though we are devastated, we will once again build the ruined places.” So the Lord of Heaven’s Armies responds, “They indeed may build, but I will overthrow. They will be known as the land of evil, the people with whom the Lord is permanently displeased.
Your eyes will see it, and then you will say, ‘May the Lord be magnified even beyond the border of Israel!’ ”
A Covenant Relationship
Jacob and Esau is a call back to Genesis 25,
and the covenant promise that God made to Abraham.
It was understood that the covenant promise that God made to abraham would be passed down through his descendants, through the first born.
Esau was the first born of Abraham’s son Isaac, and was heir to the promise of God. But he cared so little about God’s promise that he sold it to his little brother for a bowl of soup.
Covenants are a very important concept in the bible to understand
We don’t have anything like it in our modern context.
The closest things that we have to a covenant in the modern world would be perhaps our marriage vows.
But only in so much as you are married in the church in the eyes of God.
When you go down to the courthouse, which is what the vast majority of people in todays modern culture think of when the y think marriage and you’re married by the state, what you have is a lot more like a contract and a lot less like a covenant.
What is a covenant?
A covenant is an agreement by two parties where there is a promise of loyalty.
The expected penalty for breaking a covenant was death.
It’s not really like a contract. there’s no expiration date, there’s no get out of jail free card. Covenants were eternal promises
Sworn by an oath of life and death.
You could have covenants between different people, you could have covenants between a king and his people.
Three major types of covenants based on who outranked whom.
Kinship covenant
Both parties in the agreement are on equal footing socially
Neighbors, Husband and wife, between two equally powered kings.
Vassal covenant
Covenant by force.
If you’re the king and you conquered a people group they could swear a covenant of loyalty to you as king
And usually these were involuntary
The king would send his soldiers with swords and spears and say “would you like the opportunity to swear a covenant of loyalty to the king” totally your own choice, your free will to decide.
But everybody knew that if you answered “no” I don’t want to swear a covenant. Everybody can imagine how well that’s going to work out for you.
Grant covenant
This is where instead of the lower class person swearing loyalty, the higher class person swears loyalty. Usually in response to some act of bravery or loyalty.
If the vassal covenant is the stick, then grant covenants are the carrot. Hey I noticed you did this good thing, here’s a covenant of loyalty to reward your behavior.
God’s covenants throughout the Bible don’t really fit neatly into any one of those three types
We can rule out the first kind of covenant almost immediately, where the two members of the covenant are on equal footing, We can rule that one out automatically.
So far as I can tell, in the Bible, God never once forces israel into a covenant with him
It’s kind of like the Grant covenant, where the higher party swears an oath to the lower one. Except for the fact that there was no good deed or act of righteousness that warranted it.
God took the idea of covenant and flipped it on its head.
God picked abraham out of the blue and said, you I’m swearing a covenant with you. Why? Just cause I want to.
God’s like I’m going to bless you, I’m going to swear an oath to you, I’m going to bless the world through your descendants.
In Exodus, God rescues the Israelites from Egypt.
Normally you would expect the lesser party to swear a covenant with the higher one. Because God did all of the saving.
But instead, God says “because I so faithfully rescued you, I’m going to swear another covenant with you. I’m going to give you land, You’re going to be my special people
why you ask? because he wanted to.
It would be like if you were a business owner, and you found someone walking down the street, and you were like, hey you, I want to give you the VIP parking spot.
They’re like, I don’t even work for you.
Doesn’t matter. The spots yours, You can have it forever.
And then a few months later you found that same guy and said, Hey I appreciate you. I’m going to make you CEO of the company.
And again they’re like I still don’t work for you.
Doesn’t matter. CEO, the jobs yours.
I guess I better maybe go work for this guy. I’m CEO
And they show up, and they do a terrible job, and they’re stealing all the office supplies, and they’re working with the competition.
And some weeks they just never show up.
And instead of just firing them from your company, every now and then, you go out and you find them, and you drive them back to the office, and you give them a raise.
That’s about what God’s covenants with israel were like. How did they respond?
Partitio
Main Point: The Natural State of the world is for human beings to have an inherently dysfunctional relationship with God.
As we look at Malachi we’re going to look at the causes and effects of having a dysfunctional relationship with God. What we’re going to see is that that dysfunction spills over into other relationships. That’s the idea that I want to explore today.
Confirmatio
Relationship between God and Man
Malachi 1:6-14
Malachi 1:6-14
“A son naturally honors his father and a slave respects his master. If I am your father, where is my honor? If I am your master, where is my respect? The Lord of Heaven’s Armies asks you this, you priests who make light of my name! But you reply, ‘How have we made light of your name?’
You are offering improper sacrifices on my altar, yet you ask, ‘How have we offended you?’ By treating the table of the Lord as if it is of no importance.
For when you offer blind animals as a sacrifice, is that not wrong? And when you offer the lame and sick, is that not wrong as well? Indeed, try offering them to your governor! Will he be pleased with you or show you favor?” asks the Lord of Heaven’s Armies.
“But now plead for God’s favor that he might be gracious to us”. “With this kind of offering in your hands, how can he be pleased with you?” asks the Lord of Heaven’s Armies.
“I wish that one of you would close the temple doors, so that you no longer would light useless fires on my altar. I am not pleased with you,” says the Lord of Heaven’s Armies, “and I will no longer accept an offering from you.
For from the east to the west my name will be great among the nations. Incense and pure offerings will be offered in my name everywhere, for my name will be great among the nations,” says the Lord of Heaven’s Armies.
“But you are profaning it by saying that the table of the Lord is common and its offerings despicable.
You also say, ‘How tiresome it is.’ You turn up your nose at it,” says the Lord of Heaven’s Armies, “and instead bring what is stolen, lame, or sick. You bring these things for an offering! Should I accept this from you?” asks the Lord.
“There will be harsh condemnation for the hypocrite who has a valuable male animal in his flock but vows and sacrifices something inferior to the Lord. For I am a great king,” says the Lord of Heaven’s Armies, “and my name is awesome among the nations.”
At this point in the Bible, God was giving them a major second chance
They’re on Temple number 2, and what are they doing? they’re giving God the leftovers.
The whole Idea of the sacrificial system was to give God your best, and trust in the fact that he had vowed by covenant to take care of you.
Instead, they went out to the flock and got the Bum lambs, the ones they were losing money on. The kind of livestock that if they took it to market they’d have to sell them at a loss. And they were like, might as well just give these to God, he won’t mind. Save me some headache .
And the biting line here comes in verse 8 where he said
For when you offer blind animals as a sacrifice, is that not wrong? And when you offer the lame and sick, is that not wrong as well? Indeed, try offering them to your governor! Will he be pleased with you or show you favor?” asks the Lord of Heaven’s Armies.
The israelites were most likely under a form of covenant with the king of Persia. I can’t say for sure because we don’t have any biblical examples, but just based on the way things worked in the ancient world, they were a conquered people group. Xerxes, the king of persia at the time would have had at the very least an unspoken expectation that they would be loyal to him, and pay taxes and tribute. That was kind of standard operating procedure.
This included the king as well as all of the lower ranking government officials in the hierarchy.
God says look, the king of persia is a man. Flesh and blood. Sure he’s a powerful man, with a very large army and lots of pointy sticks
But I am the Lord God of the universe.
out of the two of us, who do you think should be getting the choice lambs from the flock? because I know darn good and well you’re not giving those bum lambs to him. You’re not giving the bum lambs to the governor.
Why would you give anybody your best and save the leftovers for God?
What we’re dealing with is a fundementally dysfunctional relationship between god and humanity. And it bleeds over into other aspects of life.
Relationship between the priests and God and Man (Shift gears
Malachi 2:1-9
Malachi 2:1-9
“Now, you priests, this commandment is for you.
If you do not listen and take seriously the need to honor my name,” says the Lord of Heaven’s Armies, “I will send judgment on you and turn your blessings into curses—indeed, I have already done so because you are not taking it to heart.
I am about to discipline your children and will spread offal on your faces, the very offal produced at your festivals, and you will be carried away along with it.
Then you will know that I sent this commandment to you so that my covenant may continue to be with Levi,” says the Lord of Heaven’s Armies.
“My covenant with him was designed to bring life and peace. I gave its statutes to him to fill him with awe, and he indeed revered me and stood in awe before me.
He taught what was true; sinful words were not found on his lips. He walked with me in peace and integrity, and he turned many people away from sin.
For the lips of a priest should preserve knowledge of sacred things, and people should seek instruction from him because he is the messenger of the Lord of Heaven’s Armies.
You, however, have turned from the way. You have caused many to violate the law; you have corrupted the covenant with Levi,” says the Lord of Heaven’s Armies.
“Therefore, I have caused you to be ignored and belittled before all people to the extent to which you are not following after me and are showing partiality in your instruction.”
The role of the priest is to act as an intermediary between God and his covenant people. They were ambassadors between god and the people
They approached the temple, they performed the sacrifices, they did the rituals, they asked for cleansing from sin.
You could think of the priests as being the middle man between God and the people.
Everyone understands what the point of an ambassador is. Your job if you’re an ambassador is to be the face of the entity you are representing
My wife is the secretary at a school. What that means is she is the first person you see when you go into the school
Whether she likes it or not, she is the face of that organization. Her actions, her behavior, how she acts, how she treats people, how she speaks on the phone can either negatively or positivly change people’s point of view of the entire organization
The priests and their actions and their behavior, whether they liked it or not, were the face for God
If you went to the priest and the priest was acting in a way that was not inline with God’s commands, that changes the way people behave toward God
If you go to the priest, and the priest is extorting people, or abusing his position, that negatively impacts people’s relationship with God
Guess what: As christians, we are all called to be priests.
There’s no more sacrifices. Jesus is our high priest. Ulitimatley that priestly role was fulfilled by Jesus
But in another sense, we are still acting in that priestly role, that ambassador role as Christians today.
1 Peter 2:9-12
1 Peter 2:9-12
But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people of his own, so that you may proclaim the virtues of the one who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.
You once were not a people, but now you are God’s people. You were shown no mercy, but now you have received mercy.
Dear friends, I urge you as foreigners and exiles to keep away from fleshly desires that do battle against the soul,
and maintain good conduct among the non-Christians, so that though they now malign you as wrongdoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God when he appears.
2 Corinthians 5:17-20
2 Corinthians 5:17-20
So then, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; what is old has passed away—look, what is new has come!
And all these things are from God who reconciled us to himself through Christ and who has given us the ministry of reconciliation.
In other words, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting people’s trespasses against them, and he has given us the message of reconciliation.
Therefore we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were making his plea through us. We plead with you on Christ’s behalf, “Be reconciled to God!”
The way we act, the way we treat people, the way we represent God is always on display for the world to see.
For the lips of a priest should preserve knowledge of sacred things, and people should seek instruction from him because he is the messenger of the Lord of Heaven’s Armies.
If the relationship between God and humanity is dysfunctional, and the ambassador relationship between the priests to god and the priests to the people is dysfunctional, what do you think that’s going to do to the relationships that all flow out of that?
The relationship between us and others
Malachi 2:10-16
Malachi 2:10-16
Do we not all have one father? Did not one God create us? Why do we betray one another, thus making light of the covenant of our ancestors?
Judah has become disloyal, and unspeakable sins have been committed in Israel and Jerusalem. For Judah has profaned the holy things that the Lord loves and has turned to a foreign god!
May the Lord cut off from the community of Jacob every last person who does this, as well as the person who presents improper offerings to the Lord of Heaven’s Armies!
You also do this: You cover the altar of the Lord with tears as you weep and groan, because he no longer pays any attention to the offering nor accepts it favorably from you.
Yet you ask, “Why?” The Lord is testifying against you on behalf of the wife you married when you were young, to whom you have become unfaithful even though she is your companion and wife by law.
No one who has even a small portion of the Spirit in him does this. What did our ancestor do when seeking a child from God? Be attentive, then, to your own spirit, for one should not be disloyal to the wife he took in his youth.
“I hate divorce,” says the Lord God of Israel, “and the one who is guilty of violence,” says the Lord of Heaven’s Armies. “Pay attention to your conscience, and do not be unfaithful.”
Our relationship with each other is meant to be a mirror that is held up to our relationship with God.
That’s especially true when we think about the most intimate relationships like marriage.
Notice in this section, Malachi talks about the sins against God and the sins against people, and the sins from a husband to a wife, all in the same breath. It’s all kind of lumped together. He moves seamlessly from talking about improper sacrifices to talking about worshiping foreign Gods to being not loyal to a spouse, all in the same flow of thought, why?
It’s all wrapped up in a package deal . It’s like the 2 for 20 deal at applebees. You don’t get substitutions.
You don’t get to pick and choose, I’m going to be loyal and faithful to God but not to my spouse or my brother or my sister. Or I’ll show love to people I like, but I’m not going to show love to god. It doesn’t work that way.
You’re either going to be a part of the covenant relationship, and every aspect that flows out of it, or you’re not.
Refutatio (Optional)
A problem in need of a solution
Malachi is the last book of the Old Testament. Both in terms of where it is in the book, and in terms of when it was written, chronologically.
Because of this, you get to see Israel at the end of a long line of failed attempts to restore a dysfunctional relationship. Relationships require two parties, they require free will. God tried everything under the sun short of forcing them to have a functional relationship with Him.
And in my opinion if a relationship is forced, then it’s not really a relationship.
So at this point in Malachi, we’ve tried it all
We’ve tried putting humanity in paradise with God, that didn’t work
We’ve tried rescuing humanity from slavery and training them for 40 years in the wildernes, t hat didn’t work
We’ve tried giving them land, and judges, and that didn’t work
We’ve tried giving them a king, and that didn’t work
We’ve tried giving them two kings, and that didn’t work
We’ve tried blessing them with wealth and luxury, that didn’t work
We’ve tried punishing them with exile into babylon, that didn’t work
We’ve tried sending them back to their home land, giving them a second shot at re-building the temple, that didn’t work
God sent prophets. He gave them the law, he gave them people to rescue them, He sent them miracles, he sent them famines, he sent them bountiful harvests .
And if you’re following along in the story of the people of israel, who is meant to be a mirror held up to our own shortcomings, at this point in malachi you’re kind of like I’m out of ideas.
We’ve done this same old song and dance for centuries now.
God’s coming to fix it himself
“I am about to send my messenger, who will clear the way before me. Indeed, the Lord you are seeking will suddenly come to his temple, and the messenger of the covenant, whom you long for, is certainly coming,” says the Lord of Heaven’s Armies.
God says I’m done messing around. I’m sick and tired of sending you prophets, and miracles, and kings, and foriegn nations.
Here’s what’s going to happen. I’m sending my envoy ahead of me, my messenger, and he’s going to pave the way, and I’m just going to come down there and clean this mess up myself.
Because the problem that we created, the problem of sin.
It’s not fixable by us
We can’t do anything to fix the broken relationship.
“Since, I, the Lord, do not go back on my promises, you, sons of Jacob, have not perished.
From the days of your ancestors you have ignored my commandments and have not kept them. Return to me, and I will return to you,” says the Lord of Heaven’s Armies. “But you say, ‘How should we return?’
Remember that covenant thing we talked about. Remember what we said the penalty for breaking a covenant was?
God made an unconditional covenant to Abraham that he would always bless him and his decendants, and that his decendants would be a blessing to the world.
That was an eternal unbreakable promise.
God made an unconditional covenant to DAvid taht there would be a king on his throne, from his lineage, forever.
That was an eternal unbreakable promise by the king of the universe.
The israelites made a covenant with God that they would always obey, always be faithful, always follow the law. Under penalty of death.
And they broke that covenant again and again and again.
The proper penalty is death. Not just on the individual level, but on the nation level. But if israel is punished for breaking the covenant, it would by definition mean God would have to break his covenant.
Israel can’t be a blesing to the nations if israel stops existing.
So what God has done, is, he has willingly tied his own hands behind his back, and made it impossible to enforce their covenant promise no matter how many times they break it. He can discipline them, he can chastise them, but the fact of the mattter is, the penalty for theri sins is death. The penalty for our sins is death.
We have a justice problem here. We can’t just have all of these promises hanging out here. Covenants demand death as a payment. And God has willingly set up the deal to make that impossible.
Someone has to die. Someone has to right this injustice. Is it going to be me? you?
God himself.
God himself has to be the one. To pay the price for the broken promises that we made to him.
In malachi 4, we read about a list that god is making. a scroll of remembrance that has those who are faithful and those who are not.
Peroratio
And then at the very end of malachi, at the very end of The old testament we read this
“Remember the law of my servant Moses, to whom at Horeb I gave rules and regulations for all Israel to obey.
Look, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and terrible day of the Lord arrives.
He will encourage fathers and their children to return to me, so that I will not come and strike the earth with judgment.”
And then it just ends.
This promise, that someone’s coming to prepare the way of the lord’s coming.
And as the old testament ends, if we were reading it like a book, we’re left on a cliff hanger.
We have all of these unbroken promises of God just kind of hanging out there.
We have all of these broken promises that demand justice just kind of hanging out there.
And we’re left with a choice.
The very next ine, the book of matthew tells us exactly what he answer is to our broken dysfunctional realtionship with God. It tells us the answer on the very next page. The israelites had to wait 500 years, but we get to find out the answer with the turn of the page, who is it who is going to fulfill all these promisees to abraham and to david? who is going to be the king who comes who is going to make things right and fix the massive injustice?
This is the record of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.