Introduction

Malachi presents us with six … let’s say ‘discussions’ … between God and the people of Israel.

The first three disclose things that they’ve messed up on their relationship with the Lord but haven’t recognised yet.

The second three confront them with downright disputes.

So, in these first three:

·       in Malachi 1:2-5 the Lord charges the people with saying he didn’t love them … we’ve covered that in a previous ‘deep-dive’.

·       In Malachi 1:6-14 the thing revealed to them was that the way they treated the Lord’s Temple and the way they were making sacrifices there actually amounted to treating Him with contempt.

They hadn’t seen that before either.

And 

·       now in Malachi 2:1-16 it’s down to the priests’ failure to teach the people and pastor them in God’s truth, bearing foul fruit in the areas of idolatry and divorce … which are curiously connected.

Let me show you what I mean.

The short story is that there was a breakdown in faithfulness that deeply damaged the structure of society, but it arose from the failure of the Bible teaching ministry of the priests.

Sometimes, as I said in our first episode in this book, Malachi seems like a very contemporary book.

So then, through Malachi, the Lord starts off by exposing the failures of the lips of the priests.

Great evils, Biblically, start there.

1) The failures of the lips of the priests, vv. 1-9

The great big opening whammy here is the way the Lord exposes the consequences of the failure of the lips of the priests in the first nine verses … and the deliberately shocking way the sentence for their sin is described.

a) Passing sentence on the priests, vv. 3-6

The Lord makes it clear in v. 1 that the direct speech that follows is addressed directly to the priests and then he goes on to say:

Malachi 2:3-6:

““Because of you I will rebuke your descendants; 

I will smear on your faces the dung from your festival sacrifices,

and you will be carried off with it. 

And you will know that I have sent you this warning so that my covenant with Levi may continue,” says the Lord Almighty. 

5 “My covenant was with him, a covenant of life and peace, and I gave them to him; this called for reverence and he revered me and stood in awe of my name. 

6 True instruction was in his mouth and nothing false was found on his lips. He walked with me in peace and uprightness, and turned many from sin.”

The whole section depicts the Almighty, through His messenger, passing sentence in Heaven’s Courts on Israel’s priests.

It is HEAVY stuff!

i) The imposition of ghastly defilement, v. 3

What’s this about?

You’ll love this!

Let me take you to Leviticus 16:27

“‘The man who releases the goat as a scapegoat must wash his clothes and bathe himself with water; afterwards he may come into the camp. 27 The bull and the goat for the sin offerings, whose blood was brought into the Most Holy Place to make atonement, must be taken outside the camp; their hides, flesh and intestines are to be burned. 28 The man who burns them must wash his clothes and bathe himself with water; afterwards he may come into the camp.”

What’s the subject matter here?

This needs a bit of explanation.

What gets burned here is the leftovers from the sacrificial rituals on the annual Day of Atonement.

Now the word there ‘intestines’ in the NIV is 

…פֶּ֫רֶשׁ pe.resh

But that Hebrew word used there in Leviticus means faecal matter, dung in the offal.

And this just happens to be the same word that is used here in Malachi 2:3.

So, again, what is Leviticus 16 referring to?

It is referring to the Day of Atonement when the priests supported the High Priest as he went into the Holy of Holies in the Temple, which represented Paradise, where God’s special presence was.

And there were special sacrifices for that special day that focused on particular sacrifices made first of all for the sins of the priests and then for the sins of all the people.

But this word which translates ‘dung’, which the NIV seems too prissy to mention and therefore choses ‘intestines’, comes up in the section about removing the parts of the sacrificial animals that are left after the best has been given to God in the sacrifice made annually for the removal of the sins of all the priests and all the people who were party to God’s covenant.

In Leviticus these parts are super-unclean so (Levitcus 16:27) “the bull for the sin offering and the goat for the sin offering, whose blood was brought in to make atonement in the Holy Place, shall be carried outside the camp. 

Their skin and their flesh and their dung shall be burned up with fire.”

So these are the leftover body parts and the faeces contained in them of the animal that has had ceremonially placed upon it the sins of the whole people.

ULTRA contaminated, these are to be taken OUTSIDE THE CAMP, to a terrible place for burning refuse, and destroyed there with fire … such is the ritual contamination that they bear.

Now track that background back into Malachi 2:3 …

Far from being carried away with all that contamination from sin to be burned up so that it can contaminate no more, that horribly defiling stuff is being pictured here as being smeared on their faces and their being carried off with it.

Where to?

We know the answer to that from Leviticus 16 … off to the valley of Ben Hinnom where unclean things continually burned, the New Testament  ‘Gehenna’.

This could not be a more powerful picture of the casting out of the defilement of the priests.

That is AWFUL!

What on EARTH can be done about it?

ii) Repent or lose the covenant with Levi, v. 4

V. 4 “And you will know that I have sent you this warning so that my covenant with Levi may continue,’ says the Lord Almighty.”

The very covenant of God with Levi was under threat because it was broken so decisively from the Levites’ side.

That covenant was a terrific blessing, but their conduct is voiding it.

Now notice the exposé of what it is they’ve done hasn’t happened yet … they’re still reeling under the shock of the seriousness of what’s been said.

That exposé is just coming down the track.

What could JUSTIFY this threat to that precious covenant with the house of Levi?

iii) Justification: they’ve shaken the foundations of that covenant, vv. 5-6

What is this ‘Covenant with Levi’?

The Old Testament has a commission to the Levites, and it comes with blessings and regulations.

But there’s no specific ‘this is my covenant with Levi and his sons’ … the way there was with Adam & Eve, or Noah, or Abraham, or David.

And yet, the phrase is not just used in Malachi because we find it in Jeremiah too.

Jeremiah was active from about 650-570 BC.

We date Malachi at the same time as Ezra and Nehemiah, around 460 B.C.

So, Jeremiah was basically before the Exile to Babylon and Malachi was around the time the Exiles returned when their banishment for their sins had run its course and their captivity was ended.

And after he’d prophesied at length about the dreadful consequences of the sin of the people which took them off into Exile and captivity, in finally prophesying about God’s restoration of His people to repentance and covenant faithfulness, we read in Jeremiah 33:19-22 “The word of the Lord came to Jeremiah: 

 ‘This is what the Lord says: “If you can break my covenant with the day and my covenant with the night, so that day and night no longer come at their appointed time, then my covenant with David my servant – and my covenant with the Levites who are priests ministering before me – can be broken and David will no longer have a descendant to reign on his throne. 

 I will make the descendants of David my servant and the Levites who minister before me as countless as the stars in the sky and as measureless as the sand on the seashore.”’

It is as sure as night follows day, all on time and according to schedule, says Jeremiah, that in the restored situation of the people of God to His favour and to the Land of His promise, after the Exile, that the COVENANT with the Levites will be restored.

BUT, says the Lord in Malachi 2:4-6 “you will know that I have sent you this warning so that my covenant with Levi may continue,’ says the Lord Almighty. 

What IS this covenant, Malachi?!

He’s almost egging us on to ask!

“Ah’, says Malachi in v. 5 …

 ‘My covenant was with him, a covenant of life and peace, and I gave them to him; 

OK. 

So the covenant blessings are there … 

חַיִּים (chay.yim) 'life'

Life

Both life itself but also sustenance, maintenance

The Levites didn’t farm the Land God gave them for their life and sustenance, their inheritance was the Lord and His service in the Temple and their sustenance came from the offerings of the people there.

And peace

So that was the blessing of God’s Old Testament Kingdom Covenant with them … 

What about the covenant stipulations?

1. It called for reverence

Malachi cites Levi himself as a living example to them of what was required by the covenant

V. 5 “this called for reverence and he revered me and stood in awe of my name.”

But it wasn’t just Temple sacrifice they were to render to God as their covenant obligation … and this is very much the point here now.

2. It called for sound doctrine

v. 6 “True instruction was in his mouth and nothing false was found on his lips. 

He walked with me in peace and uprightness, and turned many from sin.”

THAT was the obligation of the covenant with Levi … the priests.

Having spelled out the Covenant blessings and responsibilities in the original covenant with Levi, Malachi now spells out what the dung is about.

If that’s the covenant … why the dung of defilement and the rejection of them as contaminated?

b) The reasons for the sentence, vv. 7-9

In passing sentence it is customary for the Judge to account for what he’s doing, and the Lord Himself sets about doing the same:

““For the lips of a priest ought to preserve knowledge, because he is the messenger of the Lord Almighty and people seek instruction from his mouth.

8 But you have turned from the way and 

by your teaching have caused many to stumble; 

you have violated the covenant with Levi,” says the Lord Almighty.

9 “So I have caused you to be despised and humiliated before all the people, because you have not followed my ways but have shown partiality in matters of the law.”

i) Failure of sound teaching

See … we don’t really reckon that as the responsibility of the priests because (mebbe) Sunday school had all those drawings of the High Priest, possibly of Aaron himself, robed in his finery, going up into the Holy of Holies, receiving the lambs to be sacrificed or cleansing infectious skin diseases or … whatever.

There weren’t actually many drawings done in Sunday School of the priests and Levites teaching and holding people to the Law, were there?

The importance of the priests teaching the Law was lost then and it is often lost now for their New Testament successors.

“‘For the lips of a priest ought to preserve knowledge, because he is the messenger of the Lord Almighty and people seek instruction from his mouth. 8 But you have turned from the way and by your teaching have caused many to stumble”

But it’s not just that.

They were supposed to administer the regulations of the Law even-handedly …

ii) Partiality in matters of the Law

V. 9 “‘So I have caused you to be despised and humiliated before all the people, because you have not followed my ways but have shown partiality in matters of the law.’”

The Hebrew expression here means ‘to lift the face’ … that is to pick up the spirits and encourage those who should be rebuked for their sin, showing them an unjustified and thoroughly ‘partial’ favour rather than impartially rebuking their faithlessness when that’s what God would call it.

Now if that doesn’t describe what is being done in a few of the major denominations in our land at this point in time, I don’t know where you’ve been sourcing your news from.

Well, said Malachi … very impartially …

iii) This violated the covenant with Levi

V. 8 “But you have turned from the way and by your teaching have caused many to stumble; 

And what did THAT add up to?

you have violated the covenant with Levi,’ says the Lord Almighty.”

The Covenant stipulations lie broken … and the blessings can be expected to follow suit.

Covenants tended to come with stipulations and outcomes that could follow from them.

Blessings were generally balanced by curses … so when the Covenant was to be read to the Israelites in Deuteronomy 11:29 Moses spells it out as an integral part of what we know as the Covenant of Moses:

“See, I am setting before you today a blessing and a curse – 

the blessing if you obey the commands of the Lord your God that I am giving you today; 

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. 

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.”

And that is pretty much where the Lord through His prophet Malachi takes us next … 

C) The stinger: this sentence is SUSPENDED, vv. 1-2

““And now, you priests, this warning is for you. 2 If you do not listen, and if you do not resolve to honour my name,” says the Lord Almighty, “I will send a curse on you, and I will curse your blessings. Yes, I have already cursed them, because you have not resolved to honour me.”

The covenants of God come with blessings that are great and stipulations that are serious … they are MEANT to be intentionally followed.

Falling out and failing to do so comes with more than just withdrawal of the good things.

It is not just un-blessing but brings the dis-blessing of the rejected and dishonoured holy God.

And yet … look here … this is as yet not a completed verdict.

A very last chance is being given.

““And now, you priests, this warning is for you. 2 If you do not listen, and if you do not resolve to honour my name,” says the Lord Almighty, “I will send a curse on you, and I will curse your blessings.”

And yet the foresight and foreknowledge of God closes the loop.

He KNOWS BEFOREHAND that his offered mercy will not be met with repentance.

The situation is hopeless.

He hears their response even as He offers His grace:

V. 2 “If you do not listen, and if you do not resolve to honour my name,’ says the Lord Almighty, ‘I will send a curse on you, and I will curse your blessings. 

Yes, I have already cursed them, because you have not resolved to honour me.”

So far it sounds as if the passage is just a matter for the priests, but now vv. 10-16 go on to show what happens to a nation when those who are supposed to speak for God to it violate the covenant with Levi.

In doing so this passage puts an onus of responsibility on those unwise enough to listen to such faulty tongued preachers.

2) The fruit this bears in the unfaithfulness of the Nation, vv. 10-16

Now, the heading in many of your Bibles here may make this passage all about divorce.

Yes, it does speak about divorce in a particular context.

But the thrust of the whole context here is what has happened in their society … it specifically refers this to Judah … when the priests neglect their role in teaching and in holding God’s people to God’s truth.

And that’s why it starts where it does, with a call back to their most basic theological foundations as the key to dealing with the fruit of the priests’ neglect of their duties … which is the people’s falling into breaking faith.

If those tasked with upholding and proclaiming God’s word neglect their duties, chaos results, and it is as if the prophet steps in to make good the defect in the priesthood’s ministry by relaying the very foundation of faithful theology for them.

a) The lost theological foundation

Will you look at this?

This is really clever.

Using rhetorical questions Malachi starts off by making uncontroversial and general statements of principle … with no hint of the devastating way they apply to the situation of these people.

v. 10 ““Do we not all have one Father?

Did not one God create us? 

Why do we profane the covenant of our ancestors by being unfaithful to one another?”

All children of one father?

Whether God or Abraham it doesn’t really matter the point being made is that the faithful acknowledge their unity under God and in the family of the faith of Abraham.

Undeniably true.

One Creator God?

Again, to the faithful this is undeniably true.

The doctrinal basis is clearly agreed.

They were a unique people.

As 2 Samuel 7:22-24 put it:

“‘How great you are, Sovereign Lord! There is no one like you, and there is no God but you, as we have heard with our own ears. And who is like your people Israel – the one nation on earth that God went out to redeem as a people for himself, and to make a name for himself, and to perform great and awesome wonders by driving out nations and their gods from before your people, whom you redeemed from Egypt? 

You have established your people Israel as your very own for ever, and you, Lord, have become their God.”

But what is Malachi, God’s messenger going to make of that?

He’s thrown the ball into the air and is about to swing the bat …

Here it is …

If that is fundamentally who we are:

“Why do we profane the covenant of our ancestors by being unfaithful to one another?”

We are this one people under God that He has brought together from all the nations to be His very own!

So now it is their very unique privilege that their conduct is confounding!

How are they confounding it?

This principle is going to be applied in two areas of the nation’s life … idolatry and divorce.

b) The fruit of poor preaching: Idolatry - breaking faith with God, vv. 10-12

“Do we not all have one Father?

Did not one God create us? 

Why do we profane the covenant of our ancestors by being unfaithful to one another?

Where the NIV translates ‘being unfaithful’ the Hebrew says ‘breaking faith’ with one another.

It’s an expression used of one who doesn’t honour the terms of an existing agreement … and it is often used of unfaithfulness within a marriage relationship … breaking it or of breaking faith with God by entering into marriages that shouldn’t be happening (Exodus 21:8, Jeremiah 3:20, 9:2 and so on).

But it’s not just a social evil that is in view here … far from it … it is profaning ‘the covenant of our fathers’.

God required His people to behave in certain ways towards one another because they had other brothers and sisters who were also in the covenant (Leviticus 19:13-17, 25:25-28, 35-43; Deuteronomy 15:1-18, 22:1-4, 23:19-20).

This was a very well-established principle and (John L. Mackay, Haggai, Zechariah & Malachi  p.363)

“The sacred Pledge to maintain such standards was being disregarded in Judah. Their untrustworthy and inconstant behaviour was rupturing the harmony that should have existed in the community, making light of the heritage they had received from their fathers and despising the ordinances of God.”

They really hadn’t seen how serious their behaviour had become … and lacking the faithful oversight of a consistent teaching ministry from the priests had got them into this position.

So Malachi puts it straight to them …

v. 11 “Judah has been unfaithful.”

(BOOM!)

“A detestable thing has been committed in Israel and in Jerusalem: Judah has desecrated the sanctuary the Lord loves by marrying women who worship a foreign god. 

As for the man who does this, whoever he may be, 

may the Lord remove him from the tents of Jacob—even though he brings an offering to the Lord Almighty.”

The whole point behind God’s prohibition of marrying women who worship foreign gods was that they would bring their pagan worship into the heart of Old Covenant spirituality … the home, the family.

And in turn that was so serious it desecrated the sanctuary.

Mackay spells it out again for us:

“The sin of pagan marriages would thus be an affront to the presence of God in their midst, which was symbolised by the Temple.”

The key thing is that the women envisaged were not like Ruth who had come to the God of Israel ‘under whose wings you have taken refuge’ (Ruth 1:16 applies).

Marrying ‘the daughter of a foreign god’ is what has been happening here which meant having an ethos opposed to that of Israel’s God.

Ezra and Nehemiah had to grapple with this problem about the same time (Ezra 9-10, Nehemiah 13:1-3, 23-29 etc.)

And the reason they had to address this matter was spelled out in Deuteronomy 7:4 way back in Israel’s history at the start of the Conquest of the Land:

“Do not intermarry with them. 

Do not give your daughters to their sons or take their daughters for your sons, 

for they will turn your children away from following me to serve other gods,

 and the Lord’s anger will burn against you and will quickly destroy you.”

The breach of the covenant that occurred when they married these ‘daughters of idolatry’ was so serious a breaking of faith that it could not be atoned for simply by bringing animal sacrifices,  

v. 12 “As for the man who does this, whoever he may be, may the Lord remove him from the tents of Jaco 

– even though he brings an offering to the Lord Almighty.”

There was no simple atonement for such deliberate sin (Numbers 15:22-30 is very much to the point about this principle).

But Malachi has a second illustration from their conduct to share with us of how they were breaking faith off the back of the failures of their Bible teaching ministry …

c) The fruit of poor preaching: Divorce - breaking faith with one another, vv. 13-16a

“Another thing you do: 

You flood the Lord’s altar with tears. 

You weep and wail because he no longer looks with favour on your offerings or accepts them with pleasure from your hands. 

You ask, “Why?” 

It is because the Lord is the witness between you and the wife of your youth.

You have been unfaithful to her, though she is your partner, the wife of your marriage covenant.

They were offering sacrifices the way the pagans did, that is, out of their own sorrows.

But their expressions of grief (no matter how major or serious) wouldn’t do ANY good when they had unresolved issues of a faithfulness and moral nature outstanding between them and God!

In stark contrast to the priests of Malachi’s day, Paul had written firmly and Biblically to the Corinthian church in 1 Corinthians about certain covenant-destroying sins and eruptions of immorality in the church at Corinth, and as a result of the good responses they had made he writes again to them about their response to his teaching … so we read in 2 Corinthians 7:9-10:

“ … you became sorrowful as God intended and so were not harmed in any way by us. 

(v. 10 )

Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret, but worldly sorrow brings death. 

There’s the thing.

The people Malachi writes to were flooding the altar with tears (the image is of sprinkling water where blood should be sprinkled) and that cut no ice whatever with God.

Repentance was required, godly sorrow that leads to repentance and brings salvation, as Paul put it to the Corinthians.

Malachi applies his point to their practices in vv. 15-16.

Has not the one God made you? You belong to him in body and spirit. And what does the one God seek? Godly offspring. So be on your guard, and do not be unfaithful to the wife of your youth.”

 “The man who hates and divorces his wife,” says the Lord, the God of Israel, “does violence to the one he should protect,” says the Lord Almighty.”

This is about the way and the reasons they went about breaking God’s covenant by lightly and spuriously violating the covenant of marriage as God had defined it for them.

It is breaking faith that is the issue Malachi is consistently returning to.

And breaking faith has its roots in, and is the fruit of, hearing and  submitting to unfaithful, un-Biblical, preaching ministry.

Conclusion: v. 16b

Finally the Lord summarises His position … in line with the idea of vv. 1-2 that this is a certain sentence that currently hangs over them … it is as yet suspended.

If they heed this appeal there’s every reason to think that they’re going to be freed from judgement and off the hook:

“So be on your guard, and do not be unfaithful.”

Throughout there’s the recognition in this first section of the book that the sins being highlighted are very much more neglectful than wilful, but serious they are nonetheless and action is urgently needed to reform themselves.

Where does Malachi’s message leave us today?

Well …

Look around in OUR land at what is being taught by leading religious figures.

Look around at what they are teaching about the New Covenant promises (they don’t believe them) and the new covenant stipulations (they are teaching these are ‘unloving’).

Look around at the fruit of that in our nation’s spiritual life and you will see people speaking ‘love’ and defining unfaithfulness as if there were not one Creator and Father of us all.

Why?

Because functionally, in reality, they have stopped believing that there is such a One.

And this has happened ‘unawares’ to so many who un-discerningly continue to honour religious figures who should be faithful teachers of God’s way … holding the people to account for the truth of the Covenant … but who are doing anything BUT that.

This gets dressed up as godliness, but it IS not.

And if you can’t see that is exactly the sort of source of the problem we have and the fruit that it bears today here in our land in the things Malachi says in this passage today … please go and have a look through it again.

Why do that?

Do it because the consequences God warns of for people who fall into this error are very significant indeed.

Lord have mercy.

Table of Contents

Introduction

1) The failures of the lips of the priests, vv. 1-9

a) Passing sentence on the priests, vv. 3-6

i) The imposition of ghastly defilement, v. 3

ii) Repent or lose the covenant with Levi, v. 4

iii) Justification: they’ve shaken the foundations of that covenant, vv. 5-6

b) The reasons for the sentence, vv. 7-9

i) Failure of sound teaching

ii) Partiality in matters of the Law

iii) This violated the covenant with Levi

C) The stinger: this sentence is SUSPENDED, vv. 1-2

2) The fruit this bears in the unfaithfulness of the Nation, vv. 10-16

a) The lost theological foundation

b) The fruit of poor preaching: Idolatry - breaking faith with God, vv. 10-12

c) The fruit of poor preaching: Divorce - breaking faith with one another, vv. 13-16a

Conclusion: v. 16b