Malachi: Intro

Intro

Well today we are going to start into the final book of the Minor Prophets, Malachi. It is hard to believe that we started this journey through these 12 books in November of 2018! If you had asked me back then if I thought I would arrive at a point where I was starting into the last of these books I would have readily told you, “probably not.” At that point I viewed the interpretative mountains of these books as a journey that I wasn't ready for. That is why we started in Jonah, it was the only one of the 12 that I could see myself being able to preach through without the danger of crossing an interpretive bridge that I wasn't ready to cross. It is amazing then to look back on the providence of God as in His mercy He has helped me to work through these and seemingly always kept both Jake and I one step, just enough of a step a head that as I preached through the books in the winding and somewhat discombobulated order that I did, that I have always found the right interpretative answers when they were needed.

I look back and am so grateful to see the many ways in which my own understanding of the continuity of the old and new testaments and covenants has grown as we have worked through these books and I can say with certainty that I now see the overarching framework of scripture with a new sense of appreciation and awe and I hope that you also, no matter where you have popped in along this long and winding road, can say the same thing.

Now, today we are going to simply introduce this book and I would like to primarily help us understand where this book fits into the history of Israel, what the Historical context of the book is, the book can not be understood apart from that. I would also like us to consider the book in the progression of the prophetic literature which is actually the task we will take up first. Then lastly I want us just to consider how piratical we ought to find the book as we work through it, knowing as we will see, that we as God’s people under this new covenant do not find ourselves in that different of a position than did these saints who were then living in the last days of the old. This book and its charge and motivation to the people if Israel, I truly believe we shall find, is so rich in application to those of us seeking to remain faithful to Christ in our own day.

With that said lets take a moment to pray and then take up our task for this morning.

PRAY

So now first I want us to do a bit of a broad brush review of the prophetic literature we have covered and how it has functioned to bring us to this moment.

Now this is going to be very general but I think it will help us to be able to pick up the historical context then for this book and understand where the people were a bit better.

These Minor prophets began to prophesy around 200 years before Judah was taken into captivity by Babylon in 586 BC. That is a key date that every Christian with a desire to understand the narrative of scripture needs to get locked in your head, at least understanding the significance of the moment when Jerusalem is finally destroyed and the temple was burned. This is one of the final defining moments in the OT narrative, the exile to Babylon which was followed then in 70 years by the return of the people to the land of Israel and the rebuilding of the temple that we have seen recently under the ministry of the prophets Haggai and Zechariah.

For context the first of the minor prophets, Jonah, prophesied around 150-ish years after the completion of Solomon’s temple and so Solomon's temple functioned in Israel for around 350 years.

Well if you remember the Minor prophets speak a lot of judgement. We used to have a timeline of the prophets and the kings on the wall in the back and the most notable feature is that the time of the minor prophets consists of kings from both the northern kingdom of the 10 tribes and the southern kingdom of Judah who were, as a whole, pretty bad. There were bright moments under kings like Josiah and Hezekiah, but on the whole there is a dramatic drift away from faithfulness by the kings and especially by the people and the rest of the leaders, so dramatic is this departure that we find that even when a faithful king rises to the throne their religious reforms are never that long lasting.

Again, for this reason these prophets feature many and prolonged passages of judgement on Israel and Judah for their lack of faithfulness to the Covenant they had entered into with YHWH.

David to YHWH

Now one of the primary features that we saw first in these prophets is that there is a pretty noticeable break away from the imagery of the Davidic line as the messianic hope, as the kings of Judah, the sons of David, show themselves to be rather faithless leaders we see that these minor prophets begin to shine the light on YHWH Himself as Israels deliverer and the hopes that we see in earlier prophets especially in the days immediately following David and Solomon, of the righteous ruler on the throne of David dwindle dramatically.

Now we saw as we worked our way through these prophets that it wasn't as though God had adjusted His plan and decided that since David’s line was faithless that He needed to break and move onto plan B and just do it all Himself.

Rather we find that when Israel is brought back to the Land after exile there is a sharp return to the Davidic hope and we actually find that this dual messianic emphasis on YHWH as Savior and the line of David as the means of providing that Savior actually converge directly on the person of Jesus Christ who so wonderfully draws these two strands of messianic hope together as He is both the eternally existent Son of God, the second person of the Trinity and as such is the Savior YHWH but He is also wonderfully the one who would rise as the shoot from the stump of Jesse and David and who would take His seat on the Throne of David and even now as He has ascended to the right hand of the Father on High He reigns from that very throne. The messiah and savior of Israel and of the whole world is YHWH and is the Son of David!

Too Late

Now one off the other transitions that we see early in the minor prophets is a move away from a warning to turn Israel back from their wicked ways that they might not be destroyed to an acknowledgement that it is indeed too late.

We see the prophets write warnings to Israel, for sure, there are still warnings, but the hope that they begin to provide is not that if they turn they may avert God's wrath but that God is not done yet with the people and that there is yet a hope for them beyond the judgement of exile in Babylon.

These prophets in this regard sync up well with the major prophets who dominate this shortly preexilic and exilic period, the prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah who also set the stage for the messianic hopes that after Israel has been delivered from exile they would receive the wonderful promises of the messianic kingdom.

We see prophets like Habakkuk wrestle with God plan to use a wicked nation like Babylon to punish His own wicked people and yet in the end find hope that:

English Standard Version Chapter 3

17  Though the fig tree should not blossom,

nor fruit be on the vines,

the produce of the olive fail

and the fields yield no food,

the flock be cut off from the fold

and there be no herd in the stalls,

18  yet I will rejoice in the LORD;

I will take joy in the God of my salvation.

That God would save His people and judge their enemies.

This then indeed did lead to then the people exile in Babylon. Again in 586 BC Nebuchadnezzar came and finally destroyed Jerusalem and the last of Israel’s resistance and either killed them or took them into exile. And again, the temple that Solomon had built was totally destroyed. It was indeed too late for Israel to find repentance, God had wrought a devastating judgement just as His prophets had been warning the people.

Silence in Exile

We find then that the books of the minor prophets go silent during the Exile, at least until the end of it. It is not as though God was not speaking to the people. The people left in the land had the prophet Jeremiah who prophesied during the days of exile and the people taken to Babylon had the prophet Ezekiel who spoke to them in the exile but we find none of our minor prophets speaking there.

Habakkuk had been the last one until the people began to return and we find our two most recent prophets. Haggai and Zechariah.

Rebuild

As the people returned to the land you may remember that we talked about how with great fanfare they laid the foundations of the Temple and rebuilt the alter of burnt offerings and began to keep the feasts.

Everything seems to, for a short time, be going well and yet the people soon face opposition to the rebuilding efforts on the temple and for a time that work stops and the people begin to focus on rebuilding their lives.

We are getting into our more recent sermon series here and you will remember if you were here that the people persisted in this focus on rebuilding their own livelihoods for too long. Now it wasn't wrong for them to do this in the aftermath of the work on the temple being halted but they seem to have stopped seeking to rebuild the temple all together and had contented themselves with what they were doing especially in the worship of God.

They were after all keeping feasts that had not been kept in a long time and offering sacrifices on the rebuilt alter and so there seems to have set in this attitude that what they were doing was working for them and that it was good enough.

God though, calls them, through the prophets Haggai and Zechariah to finish the task of rebuilding the temple. The call of these prophets is to restore the full and faithful worship of God and stop settling for the temporary measures that they had been living with since entering the land.

In this way we see a strong focus on the Temple and on the right and proper worship of God in these prophets.

Now we know that the rebuilding of the temple was indeed completed and we also saw that at this time there was a ruler in Judah, Zerubbable, who was actually from the line of David. He was just a minor governor in this little province of the now Persian empire, but if you were a Jew in these days seeing a rebuilt temple and this man from the line of David being the one who sees the completion of this temple would have held a great deal of significance and anticipation!

And so this brings us to Malachi.

Malachi

The book of Malachi does not give us specific dating information to pin it down precisely like some of the prophets do. We know that it comes after Haggai and Zechariah because the temple is rebuilt and functioning by this time.

The primary historical source in the Bible is found in the book of Nehemiah especially summarized as Jake read for us this morning in chapter 13.

The story that is found in Nehemiah takes place some time after the rebuilding of the Temple, around 50 to 75 years.

Nehemiah is a Jew who finds prominence in the court of Artaxerxes and is sent back to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem. We wont cover the entire story here this morning but I might suggest that you read it yourself during the weeks ahead to get yourself familiar with what takes place there.

The primary choice that needs to be made when dating the book is the question of whether the ministry of Malachi comes before, during, or after the events we read about in Nehemiah.

We find that Nehemiah addresses in chapter 13 some very similar issues that are also raised by Malachi. Especially concerning the priests and how they were being careless and faithless in leading the people and also the issues of marriage to foreign women and perhaps even the issue of divorce.

Those who date the book of Malachi either before the book of Nehemiah or during the days of Nehemiah make the case that perhaps similar to Haggai and Zechariah that God might have used the prophet Malachi to lend support to the message and leadership of Nehemiah to bring about his reforms.

Now the primary issue that I see with this option is that we clearly see that the prophets Haggai and Zechariah are mentioned in connection with Zerubbable and the rebuilding of the temple, both in their own works and in the book of Ezra. However, the prophet Malachi is nowhere mentioned in Nehemiah or any other book of the Old Testament. It is for this reason that I would cast my hat in the ring with those who date the book after the events of Nehemiah. How far after we don't know but it doesn't seem that it took long for the people in this time to fall away from reforms that were made and so the book of Malachi needn't be placed that far after the events of Nehemiah.

One might also argue that if Malachi took place after and his message is so similar to that of Nehemiah that he should have then pointed back to Nehemiah's reforms and have chastised the people for falling away from them. While this is a good thought we also will see that the orientation of the book of Malachi is looking forward and so it is easier, I think, to explain how this forward looking prophet might not have mentioned Nehemiah rather than how this prophet wouldn't be mentioned anywhere in the historical record associated with the acts of Nehemiah if his prophecies had been a large part of the restoration efforts.

Now, thankfully for us this dating doesn't really affect the meaning and purpose of the book it is just helpful for us to have a general historical understanding of what was taking place during the days of the prophet and whether before or after the historical narrative we find in Nehemiah provides a good backdrop for this book.

Setting: the long coming promises

Now as we consider the historical setting for the book I think it is important for us to try and make some sense of what has happened to the people. In this book Malachi will take aim at the priests for offering shoddy sacrifices not even fit to present to their human governor and their failures to teach the people godly instruction, for the people of Judah's faithlessness to the covenant and failures to be faithful to their Jewish wives and raise up godly offspring, and he will chastise them for robbing God in failing to bring their tithes.

In sum, things are bad!

Why is this so?

Lets think back to the moment when the temple is completed.

At that point in time these people had been roused from spiritual stupor and negligence and had committed themselves to complete the work of the temple. They had done so and to their great excitement they had seen the hand of a governing son of David bring this promised work to completion. They had seen tremendous promises of God’s kingdom coming and of peace and prosperity in this newly established kingdom of the Messiah!

The combined weight of all of the messanic hopes of the OT are weighing down on these peoples anticipation of what God is going to do.

And then....

What happens?

Well we don't really know. Zerubbable passes from the scene and we aren't told of a Davidic ruler that follows. Some 50 to 75 years pass. That is longer than many of us have been alive! The Persians still rule. You have the events of the book of Esther thrown in there sometime shortly before Nehemiah but still while these events highlight God’s protection and care for His people they also highlight the opposition that they still face. They are still a small and seemingly insignificant province of a much larger and not God fearing nation who rules them at will.

These people then it seems grow apathetic to the promises of God and the need to remain faithful. The long years of anticipating the coming of the promises and the fading to history of that shining moment when all the components seemed to be assembled to make the Messianic kingdom a reality have taken their tole.

These people are still seemingly going through the motions but it is halfheartedly at best and they are quickly drifting away into areas of unfaithfulness and covenant breaking.

This then is the purpose of Malachi, to rouse a stupor-ed people to spiritual faithfulness in worship and in their lives before their covenant God.

If the call of Haggai and Zechariah had been to complete the temple and take seriously the command to worship God rightly and in all and only the ways that He had commanded that He was to be worshiped then the message of Malachi is to remain steadfast in their commitment to that worship and do so trusting in the promises of God that have been given to them regardless of how much time transpires until the promises are realized.

We will see Malachi do this by using 6 discourses in which the prophet will dispute with the people by, in general, stating the problematic practice or attitude of the people, and then expressing what the right action or attitude should be along with a supporting statement that proves or provides the reasoning for the needed attitude correction.

In this way Malachi really isn't that hard of a book to follow or understand, it does have its own set of challenges but at it heart it is a book aimed at moving the people to worship God rightly and live before Him faithfully.

Piratical

Now as we move toward our close for this morning the last thing that I would like us to consider is how practice then the book of Malachi is for us.

There are some obvious connections that we will see to the New Testament. Malachi is a prophet who both prophesies the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and also of John the Baptist as the one who would prepare the way for Him.

In fact is is the reiteration and adding to of the messianic promise that helps us to understand how practical this book will be for us.

You see we struggle with the same exact thing as these people did. We live in a time when we have recieved some great and glorious promises about what God is doing and about what He is still going to do in the future. And yet we also live in a time that seems so far removed from the time those promises were made and we live in a time when we face great opposition from the world in our seeking to remain faithful to all that God is calling us to.

Much like Israel in Malachi’s day we can loose focus on the promises that have been set before us and allow our focus and efforts to drift toward the day to day problems and challenges we face and carving out a good and comfortable life for ourselves in the world. As for Israel one of the sure signs that we have done this is that our worship will begin to slip. It becomes half hearted, maybe more focused on us and making us feel better about ourselves than about seeking to be faithful to God.

In this way this book flows naturally from what we have both seen in the two minor prophets that have come before, Haggai and Zechariah and all that we learned about the centrality and importance of worship there and also our recent time exploring the OT foundations of our worship. Over and over we are reminded that God cares a great deal about how it is that we worship Him.

Two main elements that we will see over and over again in this book are:

First, that worship takes trust. To continue to worship when the promises of God seem long in coming takes a profound trust that God is God and will bring about the things that He has promised and we therefore can worship Him faithfully though the years go by. Israel’s lack of godly worship showed that ther trust in the wonderful promises set before them had wayned. They may have been resolute when they saw Zerubbable complete the temple but what now as that day had passed and the promises of God seem to have been forgotten?

The call is still to trust, to trust that God will be faithful to bring to pass that which He has promised to His people. I read this quote a few weeks ago when we looked at the foundations for singing in our worship and it holds true here as well:

“But the church is singing, and always has been singing, and that can only mean that we are witnesses not only to the beginning of the end but to the end of the beginning. Because we are witnesses of the end, the end that has already begun in Jesus, we are so confident of the final outcome that we have begun the celebration a bit prematurely—by, say, several dozen millennia. Song is an act of faith, eschatological faith that David’s tent has been raised, that Zion is exalted as chief of the mountains, that the nations are streaming to worship there. And it is only men and women of faith who will see these promises realized more and more fully—that is to say, only men and women of song.”

We devote ourselves to worship, not just singing, but to all that God has called us to in worship both corporately and in our individual lives which are to be lived every day before God as an act of worship precisely because we have a profound trust in the coming promises of God.

And lastly, it is the covenant love that God shows to us that ought to prime the pumps of worship in our hearts. We will see this very element be the primary focus of Malachi’s first disputation with the people.

He says:

English Standard Version Chapter 1

2 “I have loved you,” says the LORD. But you say, “How have you loved us?”

God had set a unique and covenantal love on Israel. This love ought to have moved them to respond in faithful worship in all of their lives and yet they ask, “how have you loved us?” What have you done for us lately? Our response of worship can not be based solely on what we saw God do in our lives yesterday or what we might hope He will do tomorrow! It is OK to worship God for those things and we ought to be on the look out for when we see God doing things in our lives and praise Him for it. However, our worship for God ought to spring primarily from the great covenantal love that He has lavished upon us.

When we realize who we are as creatures of the dirt, vile and rebellious sinners worthy of eternal destruction who have happily stored up the wrath of God against us and yet in the midst of that we read things like:

Ephesians 2:12-13

English Standard Version Chapter 2

12 remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. 13 But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.

or Romans 5:10

Romans 5:10 ESV

For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life.

That the blessing of the new covenant is that God chose to redeem sinners who had no hope of or even desire to redeem ourselves and He did so at such a great cost, that He sent His only Son to give His life there and die in our stead on the cruel cross that He might bear the curse of sin and death for us and make us righteous in God’s site through faith in Him. This great covenantal love that God has lavished on us is the primary thing that ought to drive our worship.

May we not live our lives saying with them “how have you loved us?” may we instead be a people who, though the promises of God may seem long in coming, yet we wait for them in a worshipful joy because we have our minds fixed on the marvelous love that Christ has lavished in us when He gave His life that our sins might be washed away and we might be made children of God.