A Walk Through the Bible – Malachi
Text for Sermon: Malachi 1:1, 6; 11-14; 3:6-10; 4:5-6
Malachi is the last of the three post-exile prophets ministering in Judah after the return of the people from their seventy-year captivity in Babylon for their apostasy and idolatry against God. God first sent Haggai and Zechariah to rebuke His people for neglecting to build God’s temple. Now about a hundred years later God the glorious manifestation of God has not returned in their midst. They begin to question if God cares or even loves them.
God sends Malachi to rebuke the people for neglecting the sacrifices and worship of God once the temple was built and for being unfaithful to their covenant commitments.
We are witnessing here the re-paganization of worship and as the worship goes so goes the culture. Malachi is relevant because it was so modern, so contemporary. This is us. We are living in a time of the re-paganization of our worship and our culture. The terms used to describe our times are post-modern and post-Christian.
When a person or a nation loses the fear of God, before long anything and everything goes. There is no shame, no guilt, no taboos. As goes our worship, so goes our lives and our culture. We worship what we fear and love, and if that isn’t God then it’s idolatry and idolatry destroys a person and a nation.
We are living in a time similar to the people in Malachi’s time. Life is routine, nothing particularly spiritually significant is going on. Compromise has crept in.
Where’s God and what’s He doing? Is He being faithful to His promises? Does it really matter what we do or don’t do or how we do it? Does it really matter to God? Does He notice or care?
After Malachi there is 400 years of silence from heaven. What last message would God want His people to receive? What would be the most important thing to say?
John Piper sums up the prophecy of Malachi this way:
“The people had not learned their lesson from the exile. They had grown skeptical of God’s love for them [which He had proved by His electing them] (1:2), careless in worship (1:7), indifferent to the truth (2:6–7), disobedient to the covenant (2:10), faithless in their marriages (2:15; 3:5), and stingy in their offerings (3:8).
First, God declares His great sovereign, electing love for Israel manifested in His loving and choosing Jacob. But Israel has not reciprocated, Israel has not feared God or loved God or been faithful in her worship to God. Neither the priests or the people have honored God.