Malachi Part IV: Return To Me

[audio]

Malachi 3:6-4:6

Preached 10/7/2018 (previous) 

 

I. INTRODUCTION

Malachi was a messenger from God to a people who had returned from exile and were trying to re-establish a nation under God. They came back with the realization that they had been cast out of the land by God for their sins and they were united by the strong desire not to make the same mistakes that they had made previously.  They wanted, at least in theory, to please God and get his blessings like their fathers had done.

But as always happens to sinful people, it was not as easy as just saying that this was their goal.  When they returned from Persia to the land, they brought back a lot of the idols and ideals of the culture in which they had been living.  In less than a generation they found themselves in a funk, feeling like life with God was not all that they had expected.  Their religious observances had become boring and they wanted to live like the nations around them.  They did not so much want to live in a way that distinguished themselves from their unbelieving neighbors, and they were bitter that God had not blessed them materially in the ways that his word had promised them.  They were angry and as we saw at the end of chapter two they had reached the point of wearying God with their complaining that He was not a just God at all but was instead punishing them for being good and rewarding the wicked nations around them for doing evil.

While they thought of themselves as keeping their end of the bargain, in this book so far we see that God has accused them of despising his name through lazy worship, bringing Him junky offerings that profaned his great name before the nations rather than honoring Him.  The priests, who were supposed to bring people to God, had stumbled others and turned them away from true worship.  They had broken the law by marrying unbelieving wives from the surrounding nations and had broken God’s heart by divorcing their own Hebrew wives that they had covenanted with in their youth.

Because of this, God was not accepting their offerings and was withholding blessing from the land.  In other words, the lack of a good relationship between the people and God was their own fault.  And if they were going to ask “where is the God of justice?”, He promised that He would come and they would get Him in full force.  As we saw last week, He said:

Malachi 3:1 "Behold, I am going to send My messenger, and he will clear 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.

This verse was fulfilled with the arrival of John the Baptist as the forerunner and by the first coming of the Messiah, Jesus, to the temple.  But the promises go on from there.  The second coming of the Messiah is portrayed in the two different ministries that He will perform:

• The refining of his people – in other words, their purification into a holy people whose worship will be honoring to the Lord, and
• The judgment of the wicked, and here there is a list of sins that go from witchcraft to adultery to not taking care of the needy.  These people are referred to by Malachi as “those who do not fear me”. 

There is a clear warning to the nation of Israel but also a note of hope.  Have you noticed a familiar thread here, that you may have thought was only a New Testament kind of concept?  Consider this:

• God was displeased with their behavior and they are warned against sin and unbelief
• There is a strong warning of judgment on unbelief
• But when God talks about their restoration, it sounds like it is by his own sovereign grace, not by their works. 

As we look at the rest of Malachi and review what we have already seen, think of what we understand about our own salvation and there will be strong correlations:

1. We know that we are all sinners and cannot earn our salvation (Rom 3:10,12,23)
2. We know that God has chosen us before we were born to be holy and just before Him in love (Eph 1:4, Rom 5:8)
3. We know that God did the work to cleanse us from our sins and not we ourselves (Rom 6, 1 John 2:1-2)
4. We know He did this when we were not seeking him, were his enemies and were dead (Rom 3:11, Eph 2:1-7, 2 Cor 4:4)
5. We know that He will finish our salvation and bring us to the finish line with Him in spite of ourselves (Rom 8:29-39, Phil 1:6)

As we read through Malachi, we see a lot of these same threads.  All of God’s people are saved by grace through faith, but by his sovereign choice.  We are all supposed to seek Him, love Him, and obey Him, but in the end we will be perfected by Him through his power, by his loving grace.  He is sovereign, but we are accountable.  The same is true for Israel, as we will see today.

II-A. Unfaithful People vs Faithful God (3:6-7)

What is the basis for our security?  As evangelical Christians, we might answer “the blood of Christ”, or “the Bible”, or “my decision to accept Christ”.  But there is something more fundamental beneath all of these, without which none of them would have any meaning for us.  What is that fundamental basis?  What, if it was missing, would invalidate everything we think that we stand on?  What could the Israelites stand on, especially when God himself was charging them with sin?  The answer is given to them (and to us) in verse six of chapter three of Malachi.  In a way we can think of it as the rock-bottom assumption that grounds all of the other promises that we have:

Malachi 3:6 [NASB] "For I, the LORD, do not change; therefore you, O sons of Jacob, are not consumed.”

Do you see that without this truth nothing else is worth anything?  If God changed day by day - in other words if he was like us – we would never have anything to stand on.  The gods created by man are just exaggerated extensions of fallen humanity.  They have moods, they are fickle, and when they get angry they might strike us down in a rage even though they promised not to the day before. But the true God of the universe is immutable, which means that he does not change.

• His word “is tried; He is a shield to all who take refuge in Him. For who is God, but the LORD? And who is a rock, except our God” (Psalm 18:30b-31)
• He (God the Son) [is] “the same yesterday and today and forever.” (Heb 13:8)
• He is the one who cannot lie.  (Titus 1:2)
• His faithfulness and lovingkindness endures forever. (Ps 136)
• He is “our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in times of trouble.” (Ps 46)  

Israel had sinned, and many times God had punished them as a nation, which by the way fulfilled the promises that he made to them.  But God had made an eternal covenant with them and the fact that they had returned to the land was not due to their great righteousness, any more than their initial gathering had been.  They were still a nation because of God’s promises. And even 2400 years after Malachi wrote about these promises, after nearly 2000 years in the Diaspora around the world, receiving persecution, murder, and discrimination wherever they have gone, they are still a people today.  Paul in Romans 11 makes it clear that the promises given in the Old Testament – including here in Malachi – are still true.  In that chapter he writes that “all Israel will be saved”. God (the One who came to the temple) will purify them, as Malachi says:

Mal 3:3-4  ³ "He will sit as a smelter and purifier of silver, and He will purify the sons of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, so that they may present to the LORD offerings in righteousness. ⁴ "Then the offering of Judah and Jerusalem will be pleasing to the LORD as in the days of old and as in former years.

Just like us, this will happen in spite of their sinful tendency to fall away and not fear Him.  In verse seven God summarizes their contribution to their own longevity as a people”

Malachi 3:7a  "From the days of your fathers you have turned aside from My statutes and have not kept [them.]”

In other words, it is ONLY the faithfulness of God and his immutability that give them hope of redemption. 

In a way, we can compare God to the natural laws that He created, which are a mirror of parts of his nature (the heaven declare his glory after all).  The law of gravity is not cruel or capricious.  It holds the planet earth together.  It keeps us the same distance from the sun so we don’t freeze or burn up.  It keeps us from floating out into space to die.  It holds the atmosphere to the surface of the planet.  It keeps us alive and safe.  But if we jump off of a thousand foot cliff it will not fail to kill us on the rocks below.  If we dive off of the cliff, is it somehow gravity being mean?  Do we want gravity to change every day or stop and start at random?  No!  God is consistent also, and that keeps the moral universe from being chaotic.

But the similarity is not exact.  God is not a moral force, operating blindly and under a set of rules imposed on Him.  He is love, but He is justice.  He is slow to anger, but he will punish all sin.  He seems slow to punish the wicked, but he is patient, wanting all to come and be saved.  If He were a force, we would all be in eternal hell already. If He was a force, we would never make it to heaven. In Malachi’s time the people were not experiencing God’s full blessing, and it is clear that many in Malachi’s day were not showing signs of being God’s people.  The nation would once again suffer punishment from God if they did not repent.  But the immutable God follows up his condemnation of their sin with a beautiful, loving plea in verse seven:

Malachi 3:7b  Return to Me, and I will return to you," says the LORD of hosts.

In other words, God is still waiting with outstretched arms.  He is still with them, waiting to bless them.  And they have only to return to Him so that He can return to them.  Here Malachi follows his usual form and has the people ask the important question:

Malachi 3:7b  "But you say, 'How shall we return?'

How indeed?  God through Malachi is going to answer this question with some more examples of their faithlessness, and remember that the previous part of this book puts forward the themes of God’s faithfulness vs the unfaithfulness of the people.  But here the book is going to shift between the description of unfaithfulness and faithfulness in people.  The people of God are shown as people of faith, and the wicked are shown as those who do not fear God.

To understand the following verses clearly, we must understand what kind of faith God is pleased by.  What is faith that pleases God?

Is faith just an intellectual assent to the facts of the gospel?  After all, when Jesus was asked "What shall we do, so that we may work the works of God?" Jesus answered and said to them, "This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He has sent."  (John 6:28-29).  But there is a bit more to the equation.  As James points out:  “You believe that God is one. You do well; the demons also believe, and shudder.” (Jas 2:19)

If we are saved “by grace… through faith” (Eph 2:8) but it is not enough just to believe in the existence of God (or else the demons would be saved), then what is the mark of a believing heart?  If Satan believes that Jesus is God and that He died for our sins, then what do we need more than that?  The answer can be found in that passage that we call “the faith chapter” in the book of Hebrews.  In chapter 11 of that book there are many examples of faith heroes from bible times and the works that they did because of their faith.  James says the same thing – real faith produces fruit in the life of the faithful.  But down under it all is the great commandment :

Deut 6:5 "You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.”

This is the mirror of where Malachi started, with God declaring “I have loved you”.  Faith is returning the love of God, as John writes “we love, because he first loved us”.  What does love do?  It exalts and trusts the object of that love.  The writer of Hebrews gives the formula in Hebrews 11:6, which I believe is a great key to unlock the meaning of Malachi:

Hebrews 11:6 [NASB]  And without faith it is impossible to please [Him,] for he who comes to God must believe that He is and [that] He is a rewarder of those who seek Him.

As we look at the wicked and the faithful in the rest of this book, notice how this theme is borne out in God’s condemnation of the unbelieving hearts of the Israelites in Malachi’s day – and we can then look to see how we match up.

II-B. Faithless People vs Faithful People (3:8-17)

If God is good, He is trustworthy.  We can rest in his goodness, mercy, and his loving care.  Our faith in Him will get us through times where things do not go our way.  We will not lose sight of his lovingkindness and faithfulness every time that he allows suffering in our lives.  We will see the higher purposes in what happens in life, or if we don’t immediately see it we will at least be able to believe that there is a perfect, loving plan based on our knowledge of his immutable attributes. 

But an unbelieving heart holds back – it will not trust God but hedges its bets.  It loves things that God created rather than the One who created them, and it is stingy with worship.  God’s first indictment here follows in verse 8 and 9:

Malachi 3:8-16 [NASB] ⁸ "Will a man rob God? Yet you are robbing Me! But you say, 'How have we robbed You?' In tithes and offerings. ⁹ "You are cursed with a curse, for you are robbing Me, the whole nation [of you!]

This is part of the reason for the curse that they were complaining about at the end of the last chapter.  The people would not trust God and were refusing to bring the required tithes and offerings to the temple.  The initial question “will a man rob God” is absurd on purpose.  Of course you can’t rob God – everything belongs to Him and there is no place you could take anything that He could not get to it.  But their greediness was hurting others, and it was bringing dishonor on His great name.

In the book of Nehemiah we read that Nehemiah had been away from the land on business, and when he returned he found that the temple services had been interrupted because the Levites and singers had gone away to tend the fields.  They had to do this because the people had stopped bringing in their tithes and offerings, which were how the temple workers who led the sacrifices and worship were cared for.  The house of God was forsaken and starting to fall into disrepair.  If you think about it, the people were hurting themselves but thinking too highly of themselves.  Their weak love for God caused them to stop bringing in the tithes and offerings to the temple.  That caused the temple workers to go and work for their own sustenance, stopping the function of the temple which was to keep the people close to God.  So unbelief led to more unbelief, and the spiral was downward. 

The answer to this problem was simple – trust God with their offerings.  Why would they not trust God in this way?  Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount mentioned that the unbelieving gentiles were always worrying about food and clothing as the most important items in life, but that the people of God should not be this way.  Instead, Jesus said to “consider the sparrow” that God cared for, and to “…store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, and where thieves do not break in or steal;” (Mat 6:20) He implied that to try to love and trust in money and God at the same time was to worship and serve two masters, which was impossible.  Instead, He said true faith is to trust in God’s daily grace and that the priority was to "… seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.”  (Mat 6:33)

This was such a sign of lack of faith on the part of the Israelites that God challenges them to trust Him:

Malachi 3:10-12 [NASB] ¹⁰ "Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, so that there may be food in My house, and test Me now in this," says the LORD of hosts, "if I will not open for you the windows of heaven and pour out for you a blessing until it overflows. ¹¹ "Then I will rebuke the devourer for you, so that it will not destroy the fruits of the ground; nor will your vine in the field cast [its grapes,]" says the LORD of hosts. ¹² "All the nations will call you blessed, for you shall be a delightful land," says the LORD of hosts.

Israel had a covenant with God, and He would keep his side of the bargain to bless them physically if they would trust Him spiritually. But because they would not trust him with their required tithes, Israel had lost two benefits – they lost the provision of God and also the protection of God.  If they would trust him he would open the floodgates of heaven (the same term used to describe the flood of Noah’s day) with overflowing blessings (provision) and he would stop crop losses due to locusts and plant diseases.   Finally, the blessings would show to their neighbors and envy them – if they would only trust Him.

The second sign of wickedness was already described in last week’s section, but here God is more specific”

Malachi 3:12-15 ¹³ "Your words have been arrogant against Me," says the LORD. "Yet you say, 'What have we spoken against You?' ¹⁴ "You have said, 'It is vain to serve God; and what profit is it that we have kept His charge, and that we have walked in mourning before the LORD of hosts? ¹⁵ 'So now we call the arrogant blessed; not only are the doers of wickedness built up but they also test God and escape.'"

Here again is God’s condemnation of their terrible accusations against God of being unjust and unfair to them.  Before He said that the words wearied Him, here He declares rightly that such talk was arrogant.  How DARE they sit as judges over the judge of the entire universe!  But this has been a universal sin of humankind since Eve accepted the line from Satan that God was lying to them about the fruit of the tree of knowledge and that it would make them “like God”.  Since then the favorite past time of mankind is sitting around coming up with complaints about how God runs the universe.  How often are we tempted to say “if’n I was God I would run things differently” or “that is not fair!” or “my God would never do that”.  Certainly we look around us at the cruelty and wickedness of man to man and wonder why God does not act more quickly in certain situations.  Our faith becomes weak sometimes when millions are killed in a stupid war or a cherished and righteous friend suffers from a painful illness for no apparent reason.  But when confronted with situations whose purpose we cannot grasp, faith says “how long until you avenge this evil” (like the martyred saints in Revelation) rather than “It is vain to serve God”.  God says “vengeance is mine – I will repay”.  All wrongs will be set right.  And true faith looks beyond immediate circumstances through the knowledge of God’s immutable love and mercy.

So while the faithless are condemning God and withholding worship from Him, How do the faithful cope?  See verse 16:

Malachi 3: 16  Then those who feared the LORD spoke to one another, and the LORD gave attention and heard [it,] and a book of remembrance was written before Him for those who fear the LORD and who esteem His name.

The faithful maintain their faith by “speaking to one another”.  While the faithless were staying home and muttering against God and robbing the temple where they could build up their faith, the faithful were at the temple, learning about God and giving Him their trust, love and worship.  And the result of remembering God was that God would remember them.  This “book of remembrance” would be “before God”.  The faithful and their works are never forgotten by God, and at the judgment believers’ deeds done for God will be remembered and rewarded.  They will hear the words

Mat 25:21b  "… 'Well done, good and faithful slave. You were faithful with a few things, I will put you in charge of many things; enter into the joy of your master.'

So how could the Israelites return to God?  They must act in faith – what they already knew – and give God the credit He deserved.  It was only because of his great patience that they even had the opportunity.  Malachi called them to not waste that opportunity!

II-C. The Fate of the Faithful vs the Fate of the Faithless (3:18-4:6)

So what is the fate of the faithful and the faithless?  Between the righteous and the wicked?   In the last section Malachi gets to this.  Actually he has twice already spoken of this, but now the redemptive plan for the salvation for Israel is revealed in more detail.  God was sending a final deliverer who will make all things right and punish the wicked. 

Malachi 3:18 So you will again distinguish between the righteous and the wicked, between one who serves God and one who does not serve Him.

Those who serve God and those who don’t would stand out easily if Israel would heed the warnings of Malachi.  If they would examine their hearts now they would discern their own state.  They would no go on in their continual spiritual stupor into darkness and unbelief.  If they would return to him as a nation then the nation would be blessed.  But here Malachi takes it down to a personal level also.  To fix the nation a distinction must be made individually, because people are going to be judged eternally on an individual bases.  We know now as Christians that each one must stand before the judgment seat of Christ.  Paul wrote to the Corinthians

1 Cor 11:31 But if we judged ourselves rightly, we would not be judged.

So it is vitally important for the nation to judge itself rightly now.  The fate of the wicked would be grim:

Malachi 4:1-6  "For behold, the day is coming, burning like a furnace; and all the arrogant and every evildoer will be chaff; and the day that is coming will set them ablaze," says the LORD of hosts, "so that it will leave them neither root nor branch."

But for the redeemed, the outcome would be very different:

Malachi 4:2-3  ² "But for you who fear My name, the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its wings; and you will go forth and skip about like calves from the stall. ³ "You will tread down the wicked, for they will be ashes under the soles of your feet on the day which I am preparing," says the LORD of hosts.

For the redeemed, there will be healing and joy!  This is an echo of the picture later painted in the book of Revelation”

Revelation  21:3-5  ³ And I heard a loud voice from the throne, saying, "Behold, the tabernacle of God is among men, and He will dwell among them, and they shall be His people, and God Himself will be among them, 4 and He will wipe away every tear from their eyes; and there will no longer be [any] death; there will no longer be [any] mourning, or crying, or pain; the first things have passed away."

Again the people are directed back to the word of God – this is always the start of a return to God.  Every great revival and awakening is proceeded by attention to the word of God.

Malachi 4:4  "Remember the law of Moses My servant, [even the] statutes and ordinances which I commanded him in Horeb for all Israel.

II Conclusion

God would keep his side of the covenant if they would keep their side. This is guaranteed by God’s unchangability.  But as we saw earlier, there is more to God’s immutability than just being like the law of gravity.  God has a plan, and He is not merely reacting to what we do.  He is causing it to happen.  With this final Messianic promise, we see that God is the one who effects all of this change:

Malacho 4:5-6   ⁵ "Behold, I am going to send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and terrible day of the LORD. ⁶ "He will restore the hearts of the fathers to [their] children and the hearts of the children to their fathers, so that I will not come and smite the land with a curse."

In the end, all of the redeemed will stand humbly before God, with no boasting because they are all there by grace, through faith.  We see here that God is consistent in his working. 

While calling the people to repentance, Malachi gave Israel the promise that God would heal their hearts himself, and that the nation would be redeemed in spite of themselves.  In the mean time they must trust God, examine their own motivations, participate with a whole heart in their worship, and encourage one another to godliness.  But in the end their hope rested on the unchanging goodness and faithfulness of God.  As Paul wrote in Romans:

Rom 8:28-30  ²⁸ And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to [His] purpose. ²⁹ For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined [to become] conformed to the image of His Son, so that He would be the firstborn among many brethren; ³⁰ and these whom He predestined, He also called; and these whom He called, He also justified; and these whom He justified, He also glorified.

Thanks be to God, who is the same yesterday, today and forever!