Seven times, God makes a critical statement about Israel in the book of Malachi, and each time Israel responds with a challenge to that statement. Here are those statements and God’s answer to Israel’s objection.
God: “I have loved you.” (1:2)
Israel: “How have you loved us?” (v. 2)
Answer: “I have chosen Jacob over Esau, remained faithful to Jacob, and will bless the nations through Jacob… even though Israel has shown herself to be faithless.” (v. 5)
God: “You despise my name.” (1:6)
Israel: “How have we despised your name?” (v. 6b)
Answer: “Your worship of me is lackadaisical at best.” (vv. 7-14)
God: “You have offered polluted food on my altar because honoring me with your whole life is a weariness.” (1:7)
Israel: “How have we polluted you?” (v. 7b)
Answer: “You offer what is cheap and sick because you do not regard my Name as holy.” (vv. 9-14)
God: “You cover the Lord’s altar with tears, with weeping and groaning because He no longer regards the offering or accepts it with favor from your hand.” (2:13)
Israel: “Why does he not?” (v. 14)
Answer: “You have been faithless to the wife of your youth.” (vv. 14-16)
God: “You have wearied the Lord with your words.” (2:17)
Israel: “How have we wearied Him?” (v. 17b)
Answer: “You have said, ‘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?’” (v. 17c)
God: “You are robbing me.” (3:8)
Israel: “How have we robbed you?” (v. 8b)
Answer: “In your tithes and contributions. You are cursed with a curse, for you are robbing me, the whole nation of you.” (vv. 8c-9)
God: “Your words have been hard against me.” (3:13)
Israel: “How have we spoken against you?” (v. 13b)
Answer: “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? And now we call the arrogant blessed. Evildoers not only prosper but they put God to the test and they escape.” (vv. 14-15)
It is God’s response to Israel’s fifth objection that we now turn our attention, and it could not be more timely!
On October 7, Hamas terrorists invaded Israel and murdered babies and children, abducted and raped women before killing them, and gunned down as many Israelis as they were able. Israel is at war, and the death toll of human causalities will continue to rise. China and Russia seem to be moving closer to a formal alliance, and it is not beyond reason that Iran and North Korea may join them. Based on what I read in my Bible, I am not surprised that this is happening, and it would not surprise me if Russia and Iran got involved in what is happening between Israel and Hamas.
Now, if you consider what is happening between Russia and Ukraine, the conflict with Israel and Hamas and possibly Iran, and China’s plans to have its military ready by 2027 to annex Taiwan, what we have is the recipe for a cataclysmic global war. If that were not enough to worry about, represented in this room is a sea of worries (some legitimate and some illegitimate). If you are anxious, if you are bothered, if you are feeling hopeless, if you are tired, or if you are discouraged… Malachi 3:1-6 is for you.
The problem of Israel and our problem can be traced all the way back to Adam and Eve’s great sin, there was a type of darkness. After Adam and Eve sinned in the garden, God drove them out of the beauty of Eden into the despair of the wilderness. Before God forced Adam and Eve outside the place of life and into the place of the curse, He promised them a deliverer who would destroy all that is an enemy of life (Gen. 3:15).
Outside the Garden is the place of the curse… the wilderness. It is the place of pain, distrust, frustration, thorns and thistles, weariness, sweat, burdens, and death. The Bible says, “sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned… death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come” (Rom. 5:12, 14). In being cast out of the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve were driven away from the face of God.
God’s Justice is Not Deficient (2:17)
The people have “wearied” the Lord. The Message Bible, which is a paraphrase of the Bible, interprets Malachi 2:17 this way: “You make God tired with all your talk…”. I think this is a terrible translation of Malachi 2:17! God does not get tired, he does not need a break, and He does not get frustrated because things do not go His way. Based on the Hebrew word that is used for “wearied,” for God to be “wearied” is for Him to be troubled or irritated. Have you ever had to deal with a person whose hypocrisy is so blatant that it is aggravating? Think about what God accused Israel and her priests of in chapter two. They were guilty of breaking their covenant by marrying people who worshiped terrible gods, such as Molech, whose worship included child sacrifice. The men were divorcing the wives of their youth to marry younger women who also worshiped other gods. If anyone was guilty of injustice, it was Israel.
Israel has been on the receiving end of nations and people groups who wanted nothing but their destruction. Do you think what is happening today is new? No, what is happening between Israel and Hamas is nothing new, for throughout her history, her story is about a God who rescues and delivers. God liberated Israel from the tyranny of Pharaoh, He saved Israel from Goliath and the Philistines, He delivered His people from the Amorites, He sustained and preserved rebellious Israel through the exiles of Assyria and Babylon. Now, here they are in Jerusalem with a temple and walls by the grace and mercy of God, having demonstrated that they had no real desire to serve and worship Him, and now they have the audacity to question His moral character.
Now, this question that Israel asks in 2:17 is different than the kind of lamenting those who love God demonstrate, such as the one we are introduced to in Habakkuk 1:2-3, “How long, Lord, have I called for help, And You do not hear? I cry out to You, ‘Violence!’ Yet You do not save. Why do You make me see disaster, And make me look at destitution? Yes, devastation and violence are before me; Strife exists and contention arises” (NASB). Wow, Habakkuk’s question could not be more relevant for what we are seeing in our world today! His question is very different than the one Israel asked in Malachi, and it is very different than some of the questions you have been asked, questions like: “How can you believe in a good God when there is so much suffering in the world?” Or “How can God be in control, when the world is so out of control?”
We tend to measure the justice of God against our own sense of justice. The problem with that is that our sense of justice is only as pure as we are good human beings. The crazy thing is that most Americans (80%) rightly believe that most of the suffering in our world is caused by humans. The bad news is that we have tried all kinds of things to fix ourselves, but only seem to make our situation worse. There are more slaves today than ever before. An increase of over 100 million people faced hunger in 2022, with a total of 783 million people who continue to go hungry in our world today even though there are more than enough food producers to meet the needs of the hungry. With all of our talk about peace, we humans are still the most dangerous species on planet earth. Our problem is as old as the Garden when Adam and Eve bit into the forbidden fruit: “…for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Rom. 3:23). Or, as the prophet Jeremiah put it: “The heart is more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick; who can understand it” (Jer. 17:9; NASB)?
I have preached whole sermons on the topic of God’s goodness alone, but I do not have the time to do that here. What I will say is that God is good (Nah. 1:7) because He is Holy (Isa. 6:3). Because God is God, for Him to be good, He must be infinitely good. What does it mean for God to be infinitely good? What it means is that there is absolutely no room or any need for improvement for God. Therefore, if God is infinitely good, then He is equally just! This is why the Psalmist says of our great God: “Righteousness and justice are the foundation of your throne; steadfast love and faithfulness go before you” (Ps. 89:14).
God’s Plan is Redemptive
God’s answer to Israel’s question regarding the justice of God is Malachi 3:1-6. Where is the God of Justice? Oh, He has never left! He has always been with His people. He has been with His people because He is also a God of mercy. When Moses asked to see the face of God, he was permitted to see Him pass by while not being permitted to see His face; when God passed by, this is what Moses heard Him say:
The Lord passed before him and proclaimed, “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.” (Exod. 34:6-7)
God’s justice was coming, and the people who deserved to experience it first were all of Israel, beginning with her priests who did not regard God’s name as holy. However, the way that He would do it would be in a way where His infinite justice and his infinite mercy will intersect with His infinite holiness and His infinite love. How would He do it? The answer is in the first verse: “Behold, I send my messenger, and he will prepare the way before me. And the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple; and the messenger of the covenant in whom you delight, behold, he is coming, says the Lord of hosts.”
The One that Israel calls “Father” (2:10), is the One who will send His messenger. Who is the messenger that will be sent? It was John the Baptist, who is a type of Elijah, who went before the Lord, “…in the spirit and power of Elijah” (Luke 1:17). Who is the “Lord” that would, “…come to his temple”? He is someone greater than Elijah or John the Baptist. The Lord whom John was sent to prepare the way for is the One who owns the temple. He is the One spoken of in Jeremiah 23:5-6, “Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will raise up for David a righteous Branch, and he shall reign as king and deal wisely, and shall execute justice and righteousness in the land. In his days Judah will be saved, and Israel will dwell securely. And this is the name by which he will be called: ‘The Lord is our righteousness.’”
The first word in Malachi 3:1 is “Behold” and it literally means: “Here am I.” Israel asks: “Where is the God of Justice?” God’s answers: “Here I am! I am sending my messenger before me who will prepare the way for Me to come to my Temple that you have polluted, for when I come, you will call Me: ‘The Lord is our righteousness.’” Who is this “Lord our righteousness?” He is the righteous Branch of David! If Israel and the Priests had the sense to ask, they would have asked God: How can Yahweh come as the human descendant of David? This is the question the apostle John answers over 400 years later:
“There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came as a witness, to bear witness about the light, that all might believe through him. He was not the light, but came to bear witness about the light.
The true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.
And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. (John bore witness about him, and cried out, “This was he of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me ranks before me, because he was before me.’”) For from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known.” (John 1:6–18)
Jesus is, The Lord our righteousness who came, but the priests and much of Israel did not receive Him. What was the purpose of his coming? Well, Malachi tells us in verses 2-3, “But who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears? For he is like a refiner’s fire and like fullers’ soap. He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and he will purify the sons of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, and they will bring offerings in righteousness to the Lord.”
God’s Love is Restorative
The story of humanity is one where we cannot help ourselves, for there is no remedy we can create to fix our sin problem. Our story is also Israel’s story, and the promise of Malachi 3:3 is that God would not and does not abandon impure people like us… not because we deserve salvation, but because He is committed to his promise to bless the nations through Israel and the way that he would do it is through the righteous branch of David, namely Jesus the Christ.
Through Jesus, a day will come when Israel says, “Great is the Lord beyond the border of Israel” (Mal. 1:5)! Through Jesus, a day is coming when the nations will worship Yahweh: “From the rising of the sun to its setting, my name will be great among the nations says the Lord” (1:11)! How will he do it? Through Jesus, the righteous branch of David, “…He will purify the sons of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, and they will bring the offerings in righteousness to the Lord” (3:3), and when he does, “…the offerings of Judah and Jerusalem will be pleasing to the Lord” (v. 4).
The question begs for an answer; how will he do it? How can He refine out of mercy without the fire of his perfect justice? He would do it and He did do it by entering into our wilderness. Jesus lived the life Israel failed to live and by doing so was the perfect Jew (Heb. 1-2), the sinless and better Priest then Levi (Heb. 3, 5-7), and better than Moses because the covenant He mediates is better than the old (Heb. 8-10). Jesus entered into our wilderness for the purpose of suffering the fire of the Father’s perfect justice on our behalf; the fire fell upon Jesus instead of us. This is why the messenger said of Jesus when he saw him: “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29)! The Lamb was crucified and on that cross the wrath of God the Father was satisfied while His perfect justice, mercy, love, grace, and holiness intersected without contradiction.
After Jesus died for our sins and was buried, he rose three days later! The refiner’s fire has come to us for the purpose of redeeming lost sinners. His work continues as His fire continues to remove the dross from our lives! As the author of Hebrews exhorts the Christian, we set our eyes on Him to, “…run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking only at Jesus, the originator and perfecter of the faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God” (Heb. 12:1-2).
As for the rest of the wilderness and those who refuse to turn to the One who suffered the fire of God’s justice for sin, a judgment awaits and will come: “Then I will draw near to you for judgment. I will be a swift witness against the sorcerers, against the adulterers, against those who swear falsely, against those who oppress the hired worker in his wages, the widow and the fatherless, against those who thrust aside the sojourner, and do not fear me, says the Lord of hosts.” The Lamb of God is coming to bring the fire of God’s justice as the Lion of Judah! Jesus will come as the King of kings and Lord of lords; we are told that when He comes, “…all of the tribes of the earth will wail on account of Him” (Rev. 1:7).
You may be tempted to ask: “Where is the God of justice?” His answer is simply, “Here I am, I never left.” In the same way God answered Israel’s question in Malachi 3, He does the same for us in the last book of the Bible:
“Behold, I am coming soon, bringing my recompense with me, to repay each one for what he has done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.” Blessed are those who wash their robes, so that they may have the right to the tree of life and that they may enter the city by the gates. Outside are the dogs and sorcerers and the sexually immoral and murderers and idolaters, and everyone who loves and practices falsehood.” (Rev. 22:12–15)
Amen.
