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Introduction

Do you ever get totally fed up with the way that apparently Christian people, just … ARE?

I hear complaints about ‘the church’ and ‘the chapel’ … quite often particular churches or chapels … on a pretty regular basis.

I’ve had experiences like that this week talking with farmers and rural people here in Wales just this week, and all it took to open ears and hearts again was down to earth assertion of what the Bible says the church should be like, should be doing, should be focussing on.

Do you know, a Church of genuine people taking it seriously to walk with God is what our friends and neighbours are actually ASKING of us?!

And I also fairly regularly hear complaints from INSIDE visible church congregations … almost complaints against God … that their church running their way isn’t appreciated and supported by people outside their circle, as if people SHOULD appreciate them and SHOULD support them … regardless … I don’t know why, possibly just because they are there Sunday by Sunday for an hour before they jump into their car, very satisfied with themselves for what they’ve just done.

And then drive away back out of the area.

Until the next time.

And that sort of situation all starts, from the very beginning, with the sort of thing Malachi 3:6-12 is dealing with today.

Mercifully this passage begins with a panic-calming statement of God’s goodness, even to those of His people who lose their way …

1) The blessing of an unchanging God, v. 6

I’ve got to say I find this one of the most encouraging verses in the Old Testament:

Malachi 3:6 ““I the Lord do not change. So you, the descendants of Jacob, are not destroyed.”

Here we were, stuck with a human nature addicted to independence from the God we are so totally dependent on.

Continually wanting the good and choosing the bad.

Committed to the paths of sin at a level lower than the cognitive levels of our upper cerebral cortex.

Bound in our will to turning away from God due to the damage done by our initial human choices to turn away from the Covenant of our King.

Stuck because of our covenant violations with its sanctions whilst aspiring to … longing for … the blessings of God’s gracious covenant.

With every reason to be gigantically grateful that the God of the covenant is not short-tempered:

““I the Lord do not change. So you, the descendants of Jacob, are not destroyed.”

Fascinating language getting used here in this verse!

Did you wonder why we’re being described here as the sons of Jacob?

Not Abraham?

Not Moses, who mediated the Old Covenant in its codified form?

Why Jacob?!

Abraham was the father of the faithful.

(‘Amen, Amen!’)

Moses was the Giver of the Law.

(‘AMEN! A-MEN!’)

Jacob was … well, he was what?

A weasley little liar and a cheat!

(Ah … umm … )

But on account of God Himself, His personality, His inherent qualities and sheer Divine goodness, even Jacob was not consumed … terminated, ceased … as an expression of the consistency of God in His care for His covenant people.

And now here were the people of Malachi’s day, all those years on from cheating Jacob, a self-satisfied (‘HOW have we wronged you?) rebellious sort of people …

What are they LIKE?!

Malachi confronts us directly, in contrast with God’s utter consistency (just stated), with the utter INconsistency of these covenant-breaking people of God.

2) The problem of a self-satisfied, rebellious people, v. 7a

Malachi 3:7a

“Ever since the time of your ancestors

you have turned away from my decrees

and have not kept them”.

a) Turned away from a known path

God spoke to the ancestors of the Hebrew people in many ways and in many places.

Psalm 98:2

“The Lord has made his salvation known and revealed his righteousness to the nations.”

In Isaiah 43:11-13 the LORD proclaimed:

“I, even I, am the Lord,

    and apart from me there is no saviour.

12 I have revealed and saved and proclaimed—

    I, and not some foreign god among you.

You are my witnesses,” declares the Lord, “that I am God.

13     Yes, and from ancient days I am he.

No one can deliver out of my hand.

    When I act, who can reverse it?””

Isaiah 65:1-3 doesn’t mess about with this in the years BEFORE the Exile, from which the people of Malachi’s era have not learned nor changed their ways:

““I revealed myself to those who did not ask for me;

    I was found by those who did not seek me.

To a nation that did not call on my name,

    I said, ‘Here am I, here am I.’

2 All day long I have held out my hands

    to an obstinate people,

who walk in ways not good,

    pursuing their own imaginations—

3 a people who continually provoke me

    to my very face,

offering sacrifices in gardens

    and burning incense on altars of brick …”

Psalm 147:19-20 acknowledges explicitly the known-ness of the way now rejected:

“He has revealed his word to Jacob,

    his laws and decrees to Israel.

20 He has done this for no other nation;

    they do not know his laws.”

They have not had a navigational quandary to deal with.

They have had a very clear, known course to steer … but have abandoned it.

b) Turned away from a known God

But it’s much more than turning from a known path.

It is PERSONAL.

It is turning from the One Who would walk with them on the path.

Malachi 3:7 spells it out:

“Ever since the time of your ancestors you have turned away from my decrees and have not kept them. Return to me  …”

How can you tell they have turned away from a known path and from a previously known God?

What are the SIGNS of this?

C) Not kept the covenant’s stipulations

1. 7b “you have turned away from my decrees …”

That word for ‘decrees’ is

חֹק

(choq) 'statute: decree'

The idea seems to be that of the Great King making the sort of laws that formed the basis of the social contract with the Ancient Near Eastern Suzerain … the Great King over the little lesser kings of their territory and the Covenant which formalised it.

The King ‘cut a covenant’ (as the expression was) and that included regulations to govern their conduct and their relationship with the Authority in the empire … mutual and reciprocal obligations and commitments to the other party were set out and were to be kept on pain of heavy sanction.

And there Malachi is from the start of this particular oracle (v. 6) speaking in the Name of the LORD (the God of the Covenant) recounting this.

This God is saying to His Old Covenant people at this point:

‘You dreadful lot have turned away from the path you knew all too well about.

In doing so you have turned away from Me, the God Who made Himself known to you and sought to relate well to you.

Specifically, that shows up in the way you have NOT kept the stipulations of my covenant with you.

And this is not a temporary blip … ‘

They have done this …

d) Persistently

1. 7 “Ever since the time of your ancestors you have turned away from my decrees and have not kept them”

And now we begin to see what a BLESSING the unchangeability of God’s character is to His covenant people.

It’s not uncommon, you know, for God’s people to slip and slide and … downright fall on their face in their stuttering attempts to walk with Him.

It’s not good.

But it is FAR from uncommon.

Now, from our standpoint on the upside of Calvary, the face-plants of our faith should cause us less despair than the people of Malachi’s generation

… but isn’t it true for us that our failures can leave us feeling so defeated that we become very DISCOURAGED  in the faith?

And don’t we find all too often in those situations that the enemy of souls is right there on our shoulder in his role as the Accuser of the Brethren damning us and condemning us to ourselves and discouraging us from getting up, setting off back to or God and pressing on?

But will you look at what’s happening here, even here in Old Covenant days?

God addresses this wayward, self-satisfied rebellious people and tackles head on their waywardness … but only after He has reminded them of their refuge in Himself, in His person, in His character:

‘You are ALL of these terrible things … but you are a people I have covenanted myself with and:

““I the Lord do not change. So you, the descendants of Jacob, are not destroyed”

Way back when God was formulating His Old Testament covenant with Moses in the desert, in the central passage of that known as the Shemah in Deuteronomy because it starts off:

 ועתה ישׁראל שמע

w.at.tah yis.ra.el  sha.ma

This is the key /passage that at the recital of the Law they must pay attention to.

And as He develops it the LORD seals this core covenant passage … having explicitly spelled out in the intervening verses that the people are going to face-plant on the covenant … He seals that covenant with the pledge of His own consistent character:

“if from there you seek the Lord your God, you will find him if you seek him with all your heart and with all your soul.

30 When you are in distress and all these things have happened to you, then in later days you will return to the Lord your God and obey him.

31 For the Lord your God is a merciful God; he will not abandon or destroy you or forget the covenant with your ancestors, which he confirmed to them by oath.”

So now, the game is not lost by this demonstration of your ‘loser’ character.

Here’s how we’ll fix this now then, says the LORD of Heaven’s Armies …

3) God’s plea, v. 7b

Malachi 3:7b “Return to me, and I will return to you,” says the Lord Almighty.”

Look … can we really get this?

This is not one of those so-called ‘gods’, vengeful idols of the Ancient Near Eastern myths and epics, Who is speaking here!

This is the One True God whose greatest desire for His people is to WALK with them … to walk with them Himself.

Yes, of course He wants His people to do good.

Yes of course He wants his people to be Holy.

Yes, of course … he wants many things like that.

But these are subsets, consequences, lower floors of His towering great desire which is for fellowship with the sinful sons of men.

“RETURN to ME, and

I will RETURN to YOU,” says the LORD Almighty.”

יהוה צבאות

YHWH Tsavaoth

עליך1 war, warfare, service, going out to war.

The NET translates this Divine Name as “the Lord of Heaven’s Armies.”

He would be in a very strong position to OBLITERATE disloyal subjects.

But His objective, firmly embraced, consistently followed, passionately pursued in the face of perfidy …  

His objective was and IS to get His people BACK.

It’s an expression of His infinite MERCY that He calls his people to repent.

‘RETURN to me’, is the faithful Godhead’s plea to His unfaithful people!

It’s not a fine meted out in His courts but an invitation, an invitation to turn back to Him to walk with Him in His garden, whose pleasures are the greatest sort mankind can know.

The verb that he uses here is

שׁוּב (shuv)

‘Return’.

You see we get this issue here terribly, soul-enemy pleasingly, very wrong.

We speak of repentance, and we envisage that as being simply stopping what we quite like doing just because God says so … then already the lie that the snake told Eve in the Garden about the apple that God was only being a spoil-sport of their fun … that lie is getting made the subtext to what we understand by the noun ‘repentance’!

God is NOT calling anyone to repentance to spoil their day!

Definitely not.

What it is, is that all the while the top line call from God is to return to Himself.

To Himself Who is altogether lovely and full of delight, and to walk with Him in the blessings of His Suzerainty Covenant.

It should have been a summons to appear in His court, but because He is:

• consistent with His character and therefore

• constant in His affections for His covenant people

His summons here is NOT to appear in court, in the place of judgement, but to step into His garden to walk with him:

‘Return to ME’ … says the LORD of Heaven’s armies.

Brush that old accuser of the brethren off your shoulder, sitting there trying to persuade you that you’re a failure and you might as well give up!

‘Therefore you sons of JACOB are not consumed.’

But the point is you’ll need to repent … turn around and come running back WITH EMPTY HANDS to lay hold of Him.

Now the sad thing is this.

The LORD knows His covenant people through and through.

He knows that by the time John the Baptist comes the situation isn’t going to have improved, and that a John the Baptist figure like Elijah will be needed to once again prepare the way for the Messenger of the Covenant.

Far from coming back, God through Malachi anticipates these people are going to cast doubt on their very need to.

So He is going to go straight on and speak out their non-repentant self-defence thoughts  for them … to expose them in their weaknesses and inadequacy, those thoughts of despairing self-justification.

4) God’s people’s anticipated self-defences, vv. 7c-8

Malalachi voices two such poor despairing self-defences:

Malachi 3:7b ““But you ask, ‘How are we to return?’”

Malachi 3:8 ““But you ask, ‘How are we robbing you?’”

Can you see that this consistent God has a rebellious people?

Now the road to resolution can only be repentance … so where is it, then, He says?

They deny it all in two anticipated  ways …

a) ‘HOW are we to return?’

How can you ‘return’ if you don’t think you need to?

In their estimation there was nothing wrong with the way they were conducting themselves.

The fact that they were not even aware of it shows that they were living a very non-reflective, thoughtful, self-critical life.

You know, things we don’t like the sound of we tend to avoid?

And they didn’t like the sound of this repentance language.

They lived in the presumption they were far better than they were … and such presumption prepares the ground for real covenant unfaithfulness.

So, the LORD, through the prophet, sets about exposing some of their actual issues.

‘Will a man rob God?’

This word used here for ‘rob’ is not the usual word for ‘to steal’ but means more like ‘plunder’.

Snatching the booty from God?

Well, if you’re going to suggest it is long-term feasible to try to snatch booty from the LORD of Armies, and get away with it, you I do think you really HAVE lost the plot!

Yet, says the LORD, you have been plundering me.

So, the question that follows is at least understandable from people who are shocked by the question … they’re shocked by it because they don’t realise the mess they’ve made, and they don’t realise because the priests had not been going them proper instruction.

But nonetheless, the question these people raise follows on from their shock at what the prophet has conveyed to them about trying to plunder God.

b) ‘HOW are we robbing you?’

The LORD’s answer is blunt and specific: v. 8c ““In tithes and offerings”

In the Old Covenant, a tenth of all produce was to be ‘holy to the LORD’ (Leviticus 27:30).

It was dedicated to the LORD as part of their praise and worship for the good land He had given them (Deuteronomy 8:10).

It fell into abeyance during the Exile but tithing was reinstated on the return to Jerusalem under Nehemiah … although it soon lapsed once again.

The word used here for ‘offerings’ is part of the provision made for the priests … who if they were not provided for in the prescribed manner from the Temple offerings would have to moonlight in other jobs, and then the work they’d been set apart by God to do was bound to suffer.

This blunt statement about robbing God now finally gives way to a starkly drawn picture of life under the blessings or curses of the Covenant.

5) Life under the Covenant’s contrasting clauses, vv. 9-12

Malachi 3:9-12

“You are under a curse—your whole nation—because you are robbing me.

10 Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house.

Test me in this,” says the Lord Almighty, “and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that there will not be room enough to store it.

11 I will prevent pests from devouring your crops, and the vines in your fields will not drop their fruit before it is ripe,” says the Lord Almighty.

12 “Then all the nations will call you blessed, for yours will be a delightful land,” says the Lord Almighty.

a) Life under the curse of the broken Covenant

Malachi 3:9-10a

“You are under a curse—your whole nation—because you are robbing me. 10 Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house.”

What exactly is this curse here, that’s getting spoken about?

Well, it says by way of a quite literal translation: ‘by the curse you are being cursed’.

Ancient Near Eastern suzerainty treaties, by which the Great King governed his relationship with vassal kings (and Deuteronomy is cast in the structure those things, structure followed though not the content!)

These treaties had blessings for covenant faithfulness, and curses in them for covenant disloyalty … matters that both parties agreed to being brought down on them if they were unfaithful.

So, when Moses took the people of Israel out into the desert to institute the old covenant in Deuteronomy he sent half of the people up onto Mt. Ebal and half up onto Mt. Gerazim and the blessings were read aloud by the people on Mt. Gerizim and the curses were pronounced from Mt. Ebal.

This was commanded ahead of time in Deuteronomy 11 and it happened in Deuteronomy 27 so you can follow it up there.

So then, ‘The curse’ being spoken of is the curse of the broken covenant.

The curse from Mt. Ebal.

This arose already in Malachi 2:2, “If you do not listen and take seriously the need to honour my name,” says the Lord of Heaven’s Armies, “I will send judgment (lit. ‘The curse’) on you and turn your blessings into curses—indeed, I have already done so because you are not taking it to heart.”

Now you’ve got to bear in mind that these were the covenant stipulations that the Old Testament people of God had signed up to … they’d get a land flowing with milk and honey and they would live in it according to the plan the would preserve God’s good plan for His people IN that Land.

And what was spelled out in the penalty clauses is what we’re dealing with here.

So, Deuteronomy 11:26-29 in the desert on the East side of the Jordan before entering the Land specifies:

“See, I am setting before you today a blessing and a curse— 27 the blessing if you obey the commands of the Lord your God that I am giving you today; 28 the curse if you disobey the commands of the Lord your God and turn from the way that I command you today by following other gods, which you have not known. 29 When the Lord your God has brought you into the land you are entering to possess, you are to proclaim on Mount Gerizim the blessings, and on Mount Ebal the curses.”

So it came about that when Moses was about to leave them and they were about to cross into the Promised Land he reminded them that when they get to those mountains (Ebal and Gerizim) they were to formally institute this covenant  Deuteronomy 27:9-16

“Then Moses and the Levitical priests said to all Israel, “Be silent, Israel, and listen! You have now become the people of the Lord your God.

Obey the Lord your God and follow his commands and decrees that I give you today.”

On the same day Moses commanded the people:

When you have crossed the Jordan, these tribes shall stand on Mount Gerizim to bless the people: Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar, Joseph and Benjamin.

And these tribes shall stand on Mount Ebal to pronounce curses: Reuben, Gad, Asher, Zebulun, Dan and Naphtali.

The Levites shall recite to all the people of Israel in a loud voice:

“Cursed is anyone who makes an idol—a thing detestable to the Lord, the work of skilled hands—and sets it up in secret.”

Then all the people shall say, “Amen!”

 “Cursed is anyone who dishonours their father or mother.”

Then all the people shall say, “Amen!”

 “Cursed is anyone who moves their neighbour’s boundary stone.”

Then all the people shall say, “Amen!””

… and on it goes

They had signed up for it!

And the CONSEQUENCE of breaking that covenant is spelled out in 3:10-11 which suggests this curse has the effect of bringing drought and pestilence that destroys their crops and causes a food crisis in the Land that would otherwise have been a land of milk and honey for them.

            That was the consequence of the curse they would be FEELING at that time.

And that is totally consistent with the covenant sanctions spelled out in Deuteronomy 28:15-24 … where, incidentally, this fairly rare word for ‘curse’ also gets used in Deuteronomy 28:20.

And yet … God’s desire in all of this here is once again thoroughly to restore His relationship and His blessing to His people …

b) Life under the blessing of the wanderer’s return

Malachi 3:10-12

“ Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. Test me in this,” says the Lord Almighty, “and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that there will not be room enough to store it. 11 I will prevent pests from devouring your crops, and the vines in your fields will not drop their fruit before it is ripe,” says the Lord Almighty. 12 “Then all the nations will call you blessed, for yours will be a delightful land,” says the Lord Almighty.”

The covenant blessings of a land flowing with milk and honey are to be fully restored if and when they return.

Please notice that we are to read this Old Testament promise with our New Testament spectacles on.

We do NOT live under this Old Testament relationship with God and the blessing of a Heavenly Homeland under the New Covenant transcends anything on offer to these people here in Malachi … and we’d better not forget it!

• Returning from unfaithfulness to God now doesn’t mean that you won’t in this world need your watering can and your slug pellets any more!
• Returning now from unfaithfulness to God DOES promise a Heavenly home in Glory, but it roots our promised land not here in this fallen and damaged world (“I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble.”)

… but the blessings of the New Covenant whilst inaugurated in this world lie in another world, we’d say that our own promised land lies in GLORY (“But take heart! I have overcome the world.”)

In case you missed it, those are the Lord Jesus’s own words to His disciples in John 16:33, and through the rest of the New Testament text those disciples seem to have spent a lot of time illustrating what those words mean.

Conclusion

So, what we have here in Malachi 3:6-12 is a rich feast consisting of warnings against bad ministry leading to presumptuous faithlessness in covenant relationship with God, an unfaithfulness that is denied but which brings about a visible pattern of conduct that … though it goes unrecognised by the presumptuous … treats the Holy One with contempt.

And having looked into God’s Word at this point as if it were a mirror, let’s take a little time as we approach the memorial of the Lord’s Nativity to conduct for ourselves a personal ‘state of the covenant’, spiritual audit.

For us it’s not so much a matter of where we have broken the Temple rules.

It’s worse than that.

It’s a matter of where we’ve inadvertently, un-noticed or even in sheer presumptuous denial of the facts violated the precious relationship Christ’s blood bought.

My friends the call to us from this passage today, based on the Gospel of Grace outlined in Romans 1-11, is well-specified in Romans 12:1-2

“Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer …”

The verb there is present continuous … παραστῆσαι … do not stop offering!

“… your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship.

2 Do not conform to the pattern of this world,

but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.

Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is

—his good, pleasing and perfect will.”

In getting ready to celebrate the Incarnation, let’s ensure that our own hearts are got ready to celebrate His Incarnation.