Introduction
The last week has seen the first ‘blessing’ in the Church of England of a same sex relationship, a relationship between two female clergy, which according to Scripture God is never going to bless … quite the reverse.
And this is being done in the name of love, and being who you are and other notions of that sort.
And there was a terrible blurring of right and wrong … calling right wrong and wrong right … in the community Malachi addresses, as we’ve seen in the last few weeks.
For them and it appears amongst us that extended even to denying there was any point doing things the ‘old’ way, because they just couldn’t see what good it did to serve God faithfully.
That is the theme of their self-expression in Malachi 3:13-15 … and it really does show up in full relief now at the end of the prophecy the extent of the sheer religious cynicism of the people Malachi is called to prophecy to.
This is what happens, you see?
As soon as a sense of MY sin goes … the rot sets in.
When things progress along that track doubt starts getting cast on the goodness of God and His unfailing LOVE for His people … and then you know that the soul-rot has really got a foothold.
Ultimately, when the cynicism has grown to the point where those who should be … may still have the outward appearance of being God’s people … start to doubt the POINT of walking with God in His ways, then the dry-rot of the soul has sucked the moisture, the very life, out of the timbers, the structure has been compromised so that it can no longer bear the weight of its continued existence and the whole thing is about to crash to the ground … a total loss.
In this passage today in Malachi 3:13-4:6, let’s just gauge the extent of the cynicism of the people as it contrasts with the very opposite attitude in the faithful remnant of God’s people – noticing as we go how out of the overflows of each group’s hearts, their mouths speak.
1) Two sorts of ‘talkers’
a) Rebellious people: Arrogant talkers 3:13-15
“You have spoken arrogantly against me,” says the Lord.
“Yet you ask, ‘What have we said against you?’
14 “You have said, ‘It is futile to serve God. What do we gain by carrying out his requirements and going about like mourners before the Lord Almighty? 15 But now we call the arrogant blessed.
Certainly evildoers prosper, and even when they put God to the test, they get away with it.’”
i) Accusation
God says (literally) ‘your words have been:
cha.zaq
חָזַק
STRONG against me.
What we’ve got here is a much more aggressive pattern of behaviour than God previously spoke out against in Malachi 2:17, then.
What could constitute such aggressive speech?
What on earth could they be saying that God would see it in these terms?
We’ll see in a minute but for the moment, these people immediately come back at God (which says a lot about them in itself) …
ii) Counter-question
- 13b ““Yet you ask, ‘What have we said against you?’”
The people are again reacting to God NOT by searching their own hearts but by complaining against God … the word for their speech is the same one used to describe the Israelites ‘murmuring’ against God in the Wilderness (Numbers 21:5, 7; Psalm 78:19)
John L. Mackay comments: “They should rather ‘heed the rod and the One Who appointed it’ (Micah 6:9)”
So, God comes straight back to them to evidence His allegation.
iii) Evidence
The first element God highlights is really stark:
Malachi 3:14 ““You have said, ‘It is futile to serve God.”
‘Serve’ is far more than worship … to cover a life of covenantally faithful obedience, the life of faithful and glad obedience which depended on God to bless, trusting Him that He would not hold back from blessing it.
Saying it is futile to serve God, then, constitutes a denial of the promise and teaching of the Covenant they’d been taught.
And CONTRARY to what they’d been taught, they were now concluding that serving God was the road to ruin.
But the second element God highlights is that the dominant consideration in their lives was to seek their own personal advantage.
Malachi 3:14b “What do we gain by carrying out his requirements and going about like mourners before the Lord Almighty?”
They took both a negative and a dismal view of what the Lord’s service was like … total religious cynicism.
Their spiritual life, they had persuaded themselves, was a very sacrificial sort of life and they had decided they wanted nothing it offered.
When you tolerate religious cynicism within yourself, allow it open access into your thoughts and into your attitudes, here’s where it leads.
They felt compelled to draw back from God.
- 15 ‘but now’ gives us the clear message that what follows are the conclusions their now very cynical minds feel bound to draw:
- They will no longer try to think and behave faithfully towards the God of this covenant, in fact
- they will now lay aside any mere veneer of faithfulness but will speak plainly from the state that their hearts have now descended into:
‘We’ll call the arrogant blessed’ (v. 12).
The arrogant are those who are self-important, assuming everything should revolve around them … and from there it is a short step to throwing off God’s commandments as is plain from
Psalm 119:21 “You rebuke the arrogant, who are accursed,
those who stray from your commands.”
And now these religious cynics give two reasons for their conclusion:
- ‘Certainly the evildoers prosper’
- ‘Even those who challenge God escape’
This is all about the deliberate testing of God by abandoning His way to see if retribution WILL follow after all.
THAT is how far their tolerated and therefore growing cynicism had taken them away from faithfulness to their God.
There is a HUGE contrast here with those who were the faithful remnant in Israel, who are described as …
b) Faithful remnant: God-fearing talkers, 3:16-18
It is the same Hebrew word
דָבַר
da.var
that is used of the rebellious and arrogant talkers in 3:13-15 that is used here again in vv. 16-18.
“Then those who feared the Lord talked with each other, and the Lord listened and heard. A scroll of remembrance was written in his presence concerning those who feared the Lord and honoured his name.
17 “On the day when I act,” says the Lord Almighty, “they will be my treasured possession. I will spare them, just as a father has compassion and spares his son who serves him. 18 And you will again see the distinction between the righteous and the wicked, between those who serve God and those who do not.”
This highlights the contrast in the things the two groups were talking about, as if the prophet was saying: ‘that group talked and it went like that, but THIS group talked and it was like THIS’.
We’re told in Malachi 3:16 what was only implied of the arrogant talkers in vv. 13-15 that “those who feared the Lord talked with each other, and the Lord listened and heard.”
And furthermore there we’re told that the Lord commanded it and a scroll was written in His presence, in just the way that the Ancient Near Eastern kings recorded acts of love and loyalty to put those things on record about individuals that had served them well (you might remember this from the book of Esther).
The Lord is clear in 3 v 17 how He feels about these who are faithful in heart:
“ “On the day when I act,” says the Lord Almighty, “they will be my treasured possession.”
The word ‘mine’ in that sentence is emphatic.
The expression translated here as ’my treasured possession’ was used in a secular context when these old kings spoke of their personal treasure rather than the property of the King as monarch.
It is used in (for example) Exodus 19:5 to speak of the way Israel had this close personal relationship with God, whereas the other nations were His as part of His Kingly wealth not His personal possession as the redeemed people of God.
And the key to the response God is going to make in response to the way these two groups hearts overflowed into their speech is now made very plain with the powerful way His intentions towards the faithful remnant is set out in v. 18 “ I will spare them, just as a father has compassion and spares his son who serves him. 18 And you will again see the distinction between the righteous and the wicked, between those who serve God and those who do not.”
God will restore clarity to the situation to banish the muddying of the waters stirred up by the religious cynicism He’s been countering throughout the book.
Now in chapter 4 the Lord spells out through Malachi His messenger how this will work out … there will be two sorts of response from God.
2) Two sorts of response from God
a) Stubble burning and ground clearance, 4:1
Malachi 4:1 ““Surely the day is coming; it will burn like a furnace. All the arrogant and every evildoer will be stubble, and the day that is coming will set them on fire,” says the Lord Almighty. “Not a root or a branch will be left to them.”
The LORD, the legitimate Great King, the Suzerain of the ends of the earth will deal with religious cynicism that calls wrong ‘right’ and right ‘wrong’.
And He will do it by treating the arrogant against God and every evildoer that is in rebellion against His Kingship and royal rule as if they were brash left from tree felling once the usable logs have been harvested, like the stubble at the harvest after the fruitful grain and useful straw has been harvested.
As we fetch the petrol can and put a light to it (can’t with stubble any more because it’s been banned but you get the idea), so will the Lord put a light to them.
And then we shall again see the distinction of the faithful to the covenant and the wicked.
Don’t we LONG for that in the days in which WE live, that God would once again clarify the situation and separate the righteous from the wicked.
God has been very, very patient, but now in Malachi 4 He says He’s coming soon for that.
No matter how people felt, there is (Malachi tells us) the certain and impending reality of God’s judgement to be expected.
He will not be mocked.
The day is coming.
Not a root where the scrub was felled, not a branch will be left to them.
Cleaned up and cleaned out.
Just as a matter of interest, if you do an internet search for the origins of the phrase ‘root and branch’, the best explanation is probably the one in the Oxford English Dictionary which says:
“The earliest known use of the phrase root and branch is in the mid 1600s.
OED's earliest evidence for root and branch is from 1640, in a diary entry by Henry Slingsby, royalist army officer and conspirator.”
Well, in the early 1600s what happens is the Protestant Reformation starts to really fly at grass roots in English society and the Bible starts getting read much more by ordinary people (although the state isn’t too happy about it) but by 1640 puritanism is really getting going with a big emphasis on Bible reading and … especially amongst the more radical members of the population … the minor prophets are starting to be very popular.
The phrase ‘root and branch’ starts to be used a lot in their political leaflets to describe the thorough reform, kicking out the rotten things they were against in the England of their day, which they wanted to see dealt with decisively in their politics and society …
The phrase doesn’t seem to crop up anywhere else in Scripture so … we seem to owe the idea of root and branch reform to this passage in Malachi 4:1
So, contrary to the way things seemed in Malachi’s time, the arrogant talkers whose hearts overflowed so rebelliously through the words they spoke would be dealt with decisively in judgement.
On the other hand God would deal very differently with His faithful covenant people on the day He was going to come.
b) The coming of the Sun of righteousness, 4:2-3
Malachi 4:2-3 “But for you who revere my name,
the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its rays.
And you will go out and frolic like well-fed calves.
3 Then you will trample on the wicked; they will be ashes under the soles of your feet on the day when I act,” says the Lord Almighty.”
So, the key distinguishing criterion that determines their destiny is that they are “you who revere my name”
The Hebrew word translated ‘revere’ here is ya.re …
יָרֵא
It really is the verb for ‘to fear’.
If you don’t know how big and strong and HOLY God is … and can tangibly feel to us who believe … you’re quite likely to have a problem with that.
And if you haven’t in knowing that experience also become aware of something of the extreme love He has for His people, then you will probably not feel safe with the idea of the fear of God.
One of my sons was on a camp many years ago where they were playing an ice breaker game having to answer a question they were asked in front of everybody.
Now, he was a big, strong young farmer and that was very much part of his personal identity at the time and when the question came around to him the leader said: ‘What are you afraid of?’
And (apparently) like a flash he answered ‘my mother’!
Now, these were the days before ‘woke’ and safeguarding and things like that so it was seen as a very good answer.
Why?
Because there was a level of trust in the wisdom and the total commitment to her offspring of ‘the Welsh Mam’!
To fear your Welsh Mam was a safety feature, a bulwark against the vicissitudes of this precarious thing we call ‘life’ … something healthy and wholesome and right because it was a powerful force to keep you on the straight and narrow.
And in Scripture we find the idea that to fear God is the beginning of wisdom, is the foundation for living with the Great King in covenant faithfulness.
For such people as these, the Lord promises:
“But for you who revere my name, the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its rays.
And you will go out and frolic like well-fed calves.”
There’s an outcome here and a consequence.
i) Outcome
The outcome is that the faithful remnant will be blessed by the coming of the bright, shining, warming Sun characterised by righteousness.
We are celebrating Christmas this coming week and that is the festival of the coming into our world of the only righteous One.
Addressing the faithful remnant who have walked faithfully with God through their present experience of living in an age of prevailing religious cynicism, the Lord promises what - rather Who - they need.
The Lord’s response here to religious cynicism, with all the insults we’ve seen it offer to the Name of God, is to send the Sun of Righteousness.
And as He comes He brings healing in the wings under which He invites people from amongst that age of religious cynicism to gather to find refuge with Him.
And what is the effect of that for the faithful remnant who have held out for Him?
ii) Consequence
- 3 “And you will go out and frolic like well-fed calves.”
I don’t know if you have seen happy calves with their little bellies full of Mammy’s good milk frolicking around together in a field.
Few better illustrations of the joy of the redeemed exist anywhere.
And it is to the coming days, the coming times, the coming of the prophet like Elijah and the arrival of the Sun of Righteousness Who brought healing in His wings that Malachi points us as he concludes his word from the Lord.
3) Remembrance, repentance and renewal, 4:4-6
{TBC}
Conclusion
It’s been a great help to me to be working through this short series in the prophet Malachi, because the people of his era who longed for faithfulness experienced pressures from the world they lived in, pressures that were very like the expressions of religious cynicism that we see around us in the here and now.
The de facto abandonment of covenant faithfulness to God on the part of priests leading people astray,
the deliberate confusing of right with wrong and wrong with right,
the absolute religious cynicism that accuses God of wrongdoing and
focuses on the way that it appears the wicked prosper along with the denial that there’s any good to be found in personally pursuing righteousness.
And what is the Lord’s response to the tenants of His vineyard who refuse Him the fruit of His vineyard, trouble the messengers He sends to call for His due and who will finally take the life of His Son?
In mercy love and grace, in redeeming mercy and grace … He sends His Son.
He sends His Son for you and for me.
He sent Him that first Christmas Day as the Son, the Righteous One was born in a borrowed room and laid in Bethlehem’s manger … as the Son of God became the Son of Man, in order that the sons of men might by His grace become the sons of God.
Which is entirely what it’s about.
Merry Christmas.
