The word “worship” literally means: “To attribute worth to something.” The etymology of the word is literally: “worth-ship.” The book of Malachi is a book about worship and is appropriately placed at the end of the Old Testament and just before the New Testament. The prophet Malachi was one of the last prophets called to speak for God and serves as a fitting conclusion between 450-430 years before the birth of Jesus. His name literally means, “My messenger.” Whether or not the prophet’s birth name was “Malachi” or a word identifying his role as the last voice to speak on behalf of God before the 400 years that would separate the Old Testament period and the New Testament period, marked with the birth of Jesus the Christ, the prophet was the last voice to be heard before God would speak through the birth of His Son.
In our Bible you have 27 books in the New Testament grouped in the following way: The Gospels and Acts, the Epistles (Romans – Jude), and the book of Revelation. In the Old Testament, there are 39 books organized by books of history (Genesis – Esther) that cover creation to 400 B.C., books of poetry (Job – Song of Solomon) that were written between 1400 – 300’s B.C., and books of prophecy (Isaiah – Malachi). The books of prophesy are categorized into two groups based on the size of those books known as the Major Prophets and the Minor Prophets; both sets are equally the inspired Word of God. The prophetic books were written somewhere between 850 – 400 B.C.
The Old Testament points to Jesus Christ while the New Testament reflects back upon Jesus Christ; however, all of the 66 books in your Bible are the Word of God. The great theme of the Bible is Jesus Christ as the promised redeemer who was born of a virgin, lived a life we could not live in perfect obedience to the Law of God, died a death we all deserved under the wrath of God the Father for our sin, and validated all that the Bible said of him and all that he claimed by rising from the grave. This is why the opening paragraph of Hebrews states:
Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world. He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, having become as much superior to angels as the name he has inherited is more excellent than theirs. (Hebrews 1:1–4)
Isaiah, as the first book grouped in the prophetic books, appropriately begins:
Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth; for the Lord has spoken: “Children have I reared and brought up, but they have rebelled against me. The ox knows its owner, and the donkey its master’s crib, but Israel does not know, my people do not understand.” Ah sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, offspring of evildoers, children who deal corruptly! They have forsaken the Lord, they have despised the Holy One of Israel, they are utterly estranged.” (Isa. 1:2-4)
Malachi, as the last of the prophetic books in the Old Testament, concludes with the great hope of a coming redeemer: “For behold, the day is coming, burning like an oven, when all the arrogant and all evildoers will be stubble. The day that is coming shall set them ablaze, says the Lord of hosts, so that it will leave them neither root nor branch. But for you who fear my name, the sun of righteousness shall rise with healing in its wings. You shall go out leaping like calves from the stall” (Malachi 4:1–2).
The Timing of Malachi
After God lead Israel out of Egypt through Moses’ leadership, He gave them a code of ethics known as the Law. At Mount Sinai, God entered into a covenant relationship with Israel. He spoke to Israel through Moses, and said to them, “…if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples, for all the earth is mine; and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation” (Exodus 19:4–6).
While Moses served the Hebrew people as a shepherd, God promised that he would bless Israel as a nation if they obeyed his commandments. However, He also promised they would experience his discipline in the form of curses if they turned from worshiping him (see Deut. 30:15-18). One of the curses Israel would experience as a form of parental discipline would be through exile. God warned that the discipline His people would experience would be the forceful removal from the land promised to their forefathers: “The Lord will bring you and your king whom you set over you to a nation that neither you nor your fathers have known. And there you shall serve other gods of wood and stone. And you shall become a horror, a proverb, and a byword among all the peoples where the Lord will lead you away” (Deuteronomy 28:36–37).
After David died, his son Solomon became king of Israel. Solomon wrote most of the Proverbs, many scholars believe he also wrote Song of Solomon and Ecclesiastes. Solomon built the Temple which became the center of worship in Jerusalem. However, Solomon’s life did not end well. In 1 Kings 11, we learn that Solomon, who had been known for his godly wisdom and the building of the Temple, “loved many foreign women.” We learn that he had 700 wives and 300 concubines… he was the Hugh Hefner of his day. The thing is, that Solomon knew his Bible well, he knew what Exodus 34:16 said, “You shall not enter into marriage with foreign women, neither shall they with you, for surely they will turn away your heart after their gods.” The Bible says that Solomon clung to foreign women in love. So, what happened? Listen to what the Bible says about Solomon’s ending legacy: “So Solomon did what was evil in the sight of the LORD and did not wholly follow the LORD…. Solomon built a high place for Chemosh the abomination of Moab, and for Molech the abomination of the Ammonites, on the mountain east of Jerusalem. And so he did for all his foreign wives, who made offerings and sacrificed to their gods.” (1 Kings 11:6-8)
The worship of the gods (idols) Solomon set up involved orgies and child sacrifice. The arms of the image of Molech would be heated up, a child would be killed, and then placed in the red-hot arms of a demonic idol. Solomon set the stage for Israel as a kingdom to be divided into the Northern and Southern kingdoms (930 B.C.). The nation set apart to be a Kingdom of Priests never recovered from the idolatry that Solomon ushered into the nation he pledged to lead and protect. By the time we come to Malachi, Israel had been divided into two kingdoms, God used the Assyrian Kingdom to conquer the Northern Kingdom and carry into exile many from the North into other nations (724 B.C.); then years later, the Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar besieged and overtook the Southern Kingdom and destroyed its capital, Jerusalem, leveled the treasured temple Solomon built and the Hebrews treasured, and then carried off many of the people in Babylon into exile.
There were four empires that reigned and ruled over the Hebrew people for generations: Babylon, Persia, Greece, and then Rome. During the Persian Empire, a small group of Hebrews were permitted to go back to Jerusalem to rebuild the temple (Ezra), the walls of Jerusalem (Nehemiah), and eventually the city. Malachi was a contemporary of Nehemiah who built the walls of Jerusalem, and when he arrived, the temple was already rebuilt through the leadership and oversight of Ezra, who also served as a scribe and priest to the Hebrew people (see Ezra 7:11-26).
Because the temple was fully functioning by the time Malachi arrived at Jerusalem, you would think that the people who lived in the city would have been excited about the ways God miraculously brought them back into the land promised to their forefathers. Although the priests and the people participated in worship together with the construction of the temple, many were guilty of adultery, divorce, deception, sorcery, and injustice (see Mal. 3:5-7); they showed up to “church” with their best-looking church clothes, but the priests and people were spiritually apathetic and bankrupt. You would think that all the years in exile under Babylon and Persia with God’s repeated word spoken through prophets like Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel that Israel would have learned and repented from their sins, but they did not.
The Need for Malachi
About a decade before the first verses in Malachi were spoken to the Hebrew people, with the completion of the temple and the walls of Jerusalem under the leadership and reforms of Ezra and Nehemiah, the people took an oath, here are the words they spoke: We will “…walk in God’s Law that was given by Moses the servant of God, and to observe and do all commandments of the Lord our Lord and his rules and his statutes” (Neh. 10:29). Just three short chapters later in Nehemiah, the people violated their oath with God by doing just about everything they swore they would not do.
The priests swore that they would represent God and serve the people, but they served themselves instead. The people said they would tithe only the best to honor God, but they brought the cheapest and worst of their flocks to offer in worship. The men promised to marry women who loved and worshiped Yahweh by marrying Hebrew women instead of the women of the other nations, but they not only intermarried they also cheapened the covenant of marriage through divorce. And, as you listen to Malachi, there is a series of five statements that serve to gauge just how far the hearts of Israel were from Yahweh; we will look at each of these throughout our sermon series together, but for now, I only want you to see them:
“I have loved you,” says the Lord. But you say, “How have you loved us?” “Is not Esau Jacob’s brother?” declares the Lord. “Yet I have loved Jacob but Esau I have hated. I have laid waste his hill country and left his heritage to jackals of the desert.” (1:2–3)
“A son honors his father, and a servant his master. If then I am a father, where is my honor? And if I am a master, where is my fear? says the Lord of hosts to you, O priests, who despise my name. But you say, ‘How have we despised your name?’ By offering polluted food upon my altar. But you say, ‘How have we polluted you?’ By saying that the Lord’s table may be despised.” (1:6–7)
“You have wearied the Lord with your words. But you say, ‘How have we wearied him?’ By saying, ‘Everyone who does evil is good in the sight of the Lord, and he delights in them.’ Or by asking, ‘Where is the God of justice?’” (2:17)
“From the days of your fathers you have turned aside from my statutes and have not kept them. Return to me, and I will return to you, says the Lord of hosts. But you say, ‘How shall we return?’ Will man rob God? Yet you are robbing me. But you say, ‘How have we robbed you?’ In your tithes and contributions.” (3:7–8)
“Your words have been hard against me, says the Lord. But you say, ‘How have we spoken against you?’ You have said, ‘It is vain to serve God. What is the profit of our keeping his charge or of walking as in mourning before the Lord of hosts?” (3:13–14)
How Should We Receive Malachi?
There are two things I want you to see before we conclude this first sermon from Malachi. It is so easy to miss if you are not paying attention. The recipients of the “oracle of the word of the Lord” are identified as Israel; do not miss the significance of this! “Israel” was the new name God gave to Jacob whose twelve sons fathered the twelve tribes that made up the nation of Israel. By the time Malachi was sent to speak on behalf of God, the Northern Kingdom that was home to 10 of the tribes had been conquered, scattered, and assimilated by Assyria. Nearly 200 years later, the southern kingdom was conquered and deported to Babylon where the majority of the people belonged to the tribes of Judah and Benjamin. Those who were allowed back into Jerusalem under Ezra and Nehemiah’s leadership were minimal, and most likely did not include a representation of the majority of the tribes, yet God calls the beat-up and used-up ragtag group of Hebrews by the name given to Jacob to symbolize the covenantal faithfulness of God in spite of the faithlessness of his people.
The Assyrians raped the Hebrew women and forced the Hebrew exiles to intermarry with other people groups in an effort to dilute their national identity so badly that they would no longer know who they were. The Babylonian empire sought to assimilate the tribes of Judah and Benjamin into the Babylonian culture and religion by changing their names, diet, and who they worshiped. Yet, what mattered was not what the Babylonians or the Assyrians decreed, because God spoke, and those to whom He spoke, He addressed as Israel! What you need to know is that God called the Hebrews who were formerly exiles, “Israel” because they were the heirs of all the promises he made to his people through Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob – promises God intended to keep.
The next thing I want you to see is what God stated at the beginning before any form of rebuke that follows. What was needed to be said before anything else: “I have loved you.” In spite of Israel’s unfaithfulness, the first thing God wanted His people to know and to be reminded of was that he still loved them. There is mercy in God’s words: “I have loved you.” In light of Israel’s checkered past, what they deserved was not love, but wrath, not the blessing of God’s promises, but the curse of His rejection. The oracle they deserved was: “Woe to you, for you have strayed from me! Destruction to you, for you have rebelled against me” (Hosea 7:13)! Instead, what they heard was, “Oh Israel, I have loved you.”
What was Israel’s response to God’s affirmation of love? Objection in the form of a question: “How have you loved us?” After telling my wife that I love her before I leave the house, it is reasonable to expect her to respond: “I love you too.” Even after a disagreement or an argument, we both have a history of responding to the other with the affirmation, “I love you too.” If at any moment, my wife responded to me with the words: “How have you loved me?” it would indicate that something was seriously wrong with our relationship. Yet, this is the response God received from his people; the people doubted and disputed God’s word to the point that their immediate response to his claim to love them was ‘Show us the evidence! How have you loved us?”[1]
What evidence does God give? What is the answer He gives to Israel’s question? Here it is: “Yet I have loved Jacob but Esau I have hated.” What does it mean for God to love Jacob and hate Esau? The kind of love and hate that is described in these verses is similar to the love and hate Jesus referred to In Luke 14:26, “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.” The love God had for Jacob over Esau was one of preference.
Conclusion
There are three ways that God loves people in the Bible: There is God’s love of beneficence, God’s love of benevolence, and God’s love of complacency. The beneficent love of God is expressed in His pouring out his benefits upon people such as the sun, rain, and the life you enjoy. God’s benevolent love is His goodwill exercised to creation and all people; the word benevolent literally means “good will.” The opposite of benevolent is malevolent (evil will). Both Jacob and Esau experienced both the beneficent and benevolent love of God. Both men benefited from God’s gift of life and both men enjoyed a level of benevolence that resulted in prosperity. What Esau did not receive that Jacob did receive was the complacent love of God.
The original meaning of the word “complacent” literally meant: “To take great pleasure in, or to be greatly pleased.” To be complacent is to "pleased with oneself or self-satisfied.” This is very different than our modern understanding of the word. To label a person complacent today, is to say that that person is indifferent or relaxed with a smug satisfaction in his present state. In the case of the complacent love of God, He takes great pleasure in the relationship he establishes with his redeemed people. Jacob experienced the complacent love of God in that God took great delight and pleasure in His relationship with Jacob (more on this next week). God’s answer to Israel’s objection was that the way that He loved Israel not only included a love that benefited them or a will for their lives that was the result of His infinite goodness, but also a love that was expressed through His great delight in Israel as His people regardless of their faithfulness towards Him. The problem with Israel, was that they as a people were indifferent, which is a danger the Church faces today.
One of the reasons why God took great delight in Jacob over Esau was because there was a promise made long ago to Adam and Eve, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, that a redeemer would be come through their linage. That redeemer is Jesus, and it is through Him that we received a better Word than the one Malachi brought to indifferent Israel. That better Word is Jesus:
Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world. He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, having become as much superior to angels as the name he has inherited is more excellent than theirs. (Hebrews 1:1–4)
I will say more about this next week, but if you are a Christian, not only have you received a better Word, but you also are the recipient of God’s complacent love in a much more tangible way, so if you are ever tempted to ask God: “How have you love me?” God’s answer is and always will be: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16). What is the appropriate response to being on the receiving end of God’s pleasure and delight as it is expressed through his love for you? The apostle John provides us with the answer: “See what kind of love the Father has given to us that we should be called children of God; and in fact we are” (1 John 3:1).
Study Questions:
- According to Malachi 1:1, God speaks. It is through His speaking that He has revealed His will for our lives. Read Isaiah 66:1-2 and discuss why hearing God’s word is not enough.
- In light of what we learn from Malachi what kind of worship do you believe Israel participated in? Do you think it was mundane or vibrant?
- What are some ways that it is easy to “go through the motions” when it comes to worship.
- How have you or someone you know been tempted to conclude that God does not love you or that someone you know?
- Read Genesis 25:19-26 as a group. Who were Jacob and Esau and why is their story important to understanding the kind of love God had for Israel?
- As a parent, how would you respond to a child who doubted your love or asked, “How have you loved me?”
- Ask volunteers in your group to read the following scripture passages: Deuteronomy 7:7-8; Romans 9:6-13; John 15:12-17; Malachi 1:2-3. In light of these verses, what does it mean to be chosen by God? Why is Jacob and Esau’s story important in affirming God’s love for us?
- According to Hebrews 12:3-11, how do you explain the relationship between the love and discipline of God as a Father?
- In what ways does Malachi 1:1-5 encourage you? How does the realization that God loves you affect your worship of Him?
- A great description of God’s love of “complacency” is found in Zephaniah 3:17 (have someone read this verse). How does God’s delighting and rejoicing over you encourage you?
