Introduction

On October 7th this year a group of people of Palestinian origin that many states identify as a terrorist organisation invaded Israel-Palestine out of sheer frustration of all that has happened for the Palestinian people since the Balfour Declaration of 1911, the British Mandate that ruled the territory up until the creation of the state of Israel in 1948 and the wars of 1967, 1973 and 1982 … the settlements and dispossessions, and the creation of the enclave in Gaza and the West Bank situation.

Israel retaliated three weeks later and the events we are seeing played out now on our TV sets flow from a great big violent mess in the history of that region … where it all leads we may have little detailed idea.

Unsurprisingly then, we live at a time when there is a great deal of discussion about the place of ethnic Israel and where that nation stands as the people of God.

So how are we to understand all this?

And what can we learn from this for churches here in Wales and, indeed, all around the world?

Let me say right now, though, if you are expecting to hear about the politics of the Kingdoms of men you will be disappointed by the next 20 minutes or so.

This is a deep dive into the cosmic realities that underlie it all, orbiting around the words of the prophet Malachi at the back of our Old Testament.

Malachi 1:10-14 “‘Oh, that one of you would shut the temple doors, so that you would not light useless fires on my altar! I am not pleased with you,’ says the Lord Almighty, ‘and I will accept no offering from your hands. 11 My name will be great among the nations, from where the sun rises to where it sets. In every place incense and pure offerings will be brought to me, because my name will be great among the nations,’ says the Lord Almighty.

12 ‘But you profane it by saying, “The Lord’s table is defiled,” and, “Its food is contemptible.” 13 And you say, “What a burden!” and you sniff at it contemptuously,’ says the Lord Almighty.

‘When you bring injured, lame or diseased animals and offer them as sacrifices, should I accept them from your hands?’ says the Lord. 14 ‘Cursed is the cheat who has an acceptable male in his flock and vows to give it, but then sacrifices a blemished animal to the Lord. 

For I am a great king,’ says the Lord Almighty, ‘and my name is to be feared among the nations.”

1)    Rejects their worthless worship, v. 10

At the very outset of this account, God rejects Israel’s worthless worship at that point in their history.

‘Oh, that one of you would shut the temple doors, so that you would not light useless fires on my altar! I am not pleased with you,’ says the Lord Almighty, ‘and I will accept no offering from your hands.”

The LORD longs that the doors would be closed on the House that He built for His Name … because it is being used to bring down His Name, the very opposite of its purpose.

Useless fires on the altar?

Just a waste of fuel and effort.

The rhetorical language suggests that as long as the priesthood and people remain disobedient, the temple doors may as well be closed because God is not “at home” to receive them or their worship there.

But more than that.

He WANTS it shut.

The ESV is a pretty literal translation and it says:

v. 10 “Oh that there were one among you who would shut the doors, that you might not kindle fire on my altar in vain! I have no pleasure in you, says the Lord of hosts, and I will not accept an offering from your hand.”

Just as the LORD did not look with favour on Cain’s offering, so He is turning from theirs.

How much do we see in the contemporary Western church of activity without progress, of useless fires on the altar?

Food for the Food Bank, secular concepts around Environmentalism rather than the Genesis mandate for Creation focused on at Harvest Festival … 

·       projects in place of prayer, 

·       activity in place of awestruck wonder, 

·       feel good factor on Sundays in place of fellowship with the One True Living God.

Way back in Israel’s history there were examples of the folly of doing the wrong thing around the altar, the offerings and particularly putting the right fire on there.

The sacrifice and the offering … the worship and the dealing with sin of the people … needed to be ritually pure and clean.

It wasn’t a case of any old thing would do where the worship of God was concerned and there are examples where the Lord taught this principle very clearly to the Israelites.

So, in Leviticus 10:1-3 “Now Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron, each took his censer and put fire in it and laid incense on it and offered unauthorized fire before the Lord, which he had not commanded them. 2 And fire came out from before the Lord and consumed them, and they died before the Lord. 3 Then Moses said to Aaron, “This is what the Lord has said, ‘Among those who are near me I will be sanctified, and before all the people I will be glorified.’” And Aaron held his peace.”

What IS ‘unauthorised’ fire?

The word used to describe the fire under their offerings there is 

זוּר    (zur) 

This word occurs 76 times in the Old Testament … but not usually in a worship setting like this.

It means …

1) to be strange, be a stranger
1a) (Qal)
1a1) to become estranged
1a2) strange, another, stranger, foreigner, an enemy (participle)
1a3) strange woman, prostitute, harlot (meton)
1b) (Niphal) to be estranged
1c) (Hophal) to be a stranger, be one alienated

Way back in 1 Samuel 4 there is a terrible situation in Israel’s history where the leaders and people of Israel had got badly out of line, violating God’s covenant in various ways and were getting hammered in their battles against the Philistines who wanted to take from them the Land God had promised and sent the Israelites to take and hold.

So they put the Ark of the Covenant at risk by bringing it to the battle as if it were a good luck charm … putting their religious furniture which symbolised the means by which they related to God at risk as if it were some success-guaranteeing amulet rather than the symbol of their precious covenant relationship with God.

And the LORD, taking this violation seriously, allowed the Ark to be captured.

Godly and ungodly lives were lost and in the stress of it all the daughter in law of the high priest went into labour, delivered the child alive then died in childbirth … but not before she had named the child Ichabod, meaning ‘the Glory has Departed’.

They had left off their trust and broken their relationship with God, beginning to seek to get Him to do what they wanted by manipulation … and God responded by leaving those who had chosen to rely on their own devices TO their own devices.

It was as if He had picked up His Glory and left them.

We see this principle at work in places once dedicated to God’s service closing around us fairly regularly across Wales when the Word of the God Who speaks through it and fellowships by this means with His people has been let go of, and when the hearts of the people they should have been ministering the Word to have been let go of as well.

God CLOSED the doors of the place that was set apart for His worship in 1 Samuel 4 by removing the central focal point of that worship … the Ark of the Covenant.

The Glory of God that was said to dwell above the Ark between the carved cherubim had left them.

He would not take fake worship.

And here God longs for something equally dramatic to happen in the face of this people’s fakery in worship.

Shutting the doors on His presence above the Ark was as drastic as letting the Philistines capture the Ark.

But look there’s a much more serious set of consequences to follow than closing the Temple doors.

Here in Malachi it’s not just the Temple designed for His Name being used to bring down His Name that the LORD desires to shut down.

It’s the people designed to honour His Name but who were functioning to bring it down that He now intends … after all this time and all this gracious perseverance with them … to close down.

Of course there will be a faithful remnant preserved, but the people as a whole are going to be shut down as the Covenant people of God and a New Covenant is going to be instituted.

Their so-called worship is worthless, so God announces His intention to do something immense … but in continuity not discontinuity with His ancient promises.

Way back in Israel’s history, with the Nations significantly driven out and the monarchy united, David sought to set about building the Temple at Jerusalem but was stopped in His tracks by God’s Word through the prophet Nathan that it was his son that the Lord wanted to perform that task.

And when David heard this he responded: 

“‘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. 23 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? 24 You have established your people Israel as your very own for ever, and you, Lord, have become their God.”

There’s the thing, you see, God’s Name was to be great in Israel.

But Israel had denigrated God’s good Name when they lost their awe and wonder and fell into formality, away from living faith.

They’d been through the Wilderness for doing the like of that.

They’d been to Babylon and back for doing the like of that.

But now this was going to be the end of the road for them doing the like of that.

A new covenant was coming on the same terms to everyone.

The Temple sacrifice was going.

The sacrifice of the sinless, spotless Lamb of God was coming.

The Spirit was going to be given to re-orientate human hearts to God and inspire wonder and worship from the inside out.

And this was coming to all those from amongst the nations that would stand with the remnant of Israel on the level ground at the foot of the Cross to bring Glory to God.

But we are jumping the gun …

God rejects their worthless worship and …

2) Replaces Israel’s faulty worship with the worship of the Nations, v. 11

“My name will be great among the nations, from where the sun rises to where it sets. In every place incense and pure offerings will be brought to me, because my name will be great among the nations,’ says the Lord Almighty.”

If the historic band of clients are not going to do what clients were supposed to be there to do, then God the Great Patron would drop them of His list and go recruiting, 

i)      The Nations

In what is clearly a strongly ironic shift of thought, the Lord contrasts the unbelief and virtual paganism of the postexilic community with the conversion and obedience of the nations that will one day worship the God of Israel.

The NATIONS!

Who were the Nations?

The Nations were the people around the ancient Near East who had so outraged and offended God by the time of the Exodus that God had decreed their land should be allocated to the children of Abraham … the father of the faithful.

And over the whole period of the Conquest and right up to the creation of the United Monarchy under King David, that’s what happened.

Israel grew in confidence throughout this process that they were God’s people and this was the Land God had given them.

The thing is, they had pretty effectively forgotten why He did so.

So, as a result of THAT, the big questions started to arise when God declared here in Malachi that God was going to change all that and that in view of the continued unfaithfulness of His historic people Israel, He was going to broaden the scope of His deliverance and His Name which was not being honoured in ethnic Israel would now be great amongst the historic enemies of God and His people.

Basically, Malachi says, there was going to be …

ii)     Incense everywhere

Fascinatingly, in John’s vision of the End in Revelation 8

“When he opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven for about half an hour.

2 And I saw the seven angels who stand before God, and seven trumpets were given to them.

3 Another angel, who had a golden censer, came and stood at the altar. 

He was given much incense to offer, with the prayers of all God’s people, on the golden altar in front of the throne.

 4 The smoke of the incense, together with the prayers of God’s people, went up before God from the angel’s hand.”

By this stage it appears that the plan revealed in Malachi here has been thoroughly fulfilled because the people there in Revelation 8 are described in these terms just before in Revelation 7:

“there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb. 

They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands. 

10 And they cried out in a loud voice:

‘Salvation belongs to our God,
who sits on the throne,
and to the Lamb.’”

True worship has been established not amongst the historic Old Covenant people alone, but in this great multitude no-one can count from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before God’s throne in awestruck wonder giving Glory to their God Who sits on the throne and to the Lamb Who had got them there.

Patronage and clientage restored in the Nations washed in the blood of the Lamb.

What had happened was that the gathering of the Nations had given rise to there being …

iii)   Pure offerings offered everywhere

“My name will be great among the nations, 

from where the sun rises to where it sets. 

In every place incense and pure offerings will be brought to me, 

because my name will be great among the nations,’ says the Lord Almighty.”

It is their honouring the Name of the Lord that make their offerings pure.

And GOD will bring this about …

3) To restore His Glory, vv. 11 & 14

You might want to ask the question here, ‘how can doing such a thing bring Glory to God given what He’d already promised to Israel?’

It’s in Romans 9-11 that Paul deals with that question.

He has already spelled out in Romans 1-3 that salvation in Christ which fulfils the Law and the Prophets is for all nations, Jews and gentiles, by grace through faith alone:

Romans 3:21-23

“now apart from the law the righteousness of God has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. 

22 This righteousness is given through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. 

There is no difference between Jew and Gentile, 

for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,  

and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.”

Now THAT is an offence to Jewish exceptionalism, so when he is dealing with objections to this Gospel in the following chapters he addresses the questions this raised one by one, and then finally in Romans 9-11 he addresses the objection that in this Gospel God has broken His promise to the Jews.

So in Romans 9:8

“In other words, it is not the children by physical descent who are God’s children, but it is the children of the promise who are regarded as Abraham’s offspring.”

Then Paul reminds them (Romans 9:14-16)

“What then shall we say? Is God unjust? Not at all! 15 For he says to Moses,

‘I will have mercy on whom I have mercy,
    and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.’[f]

16 It does not, therefore, depend on human desire or effort, but on God’s mercy.”

It hadn’t been for any other reason that God had entered into covenant with the Jews as the historic people of God and it was in no way their entitlement … He is perfectly entitled to have mercy on whosoever He pleases and to withhold it from every judgement-deserving sinner if He so pleases!

His mercy is a grace not an entitlement, as they had come to think it was.

Paul cites Hosea and Isaiah to support what he is saying and then explains this with the Old Testament idea of the faithful remnant from amongst the Old Testament people of God that He had used historically to reform and refine their faith, shedding the unfaithful who broke covenant with Him and redefining the people of God on the basis of that remnant of faith … the sort of faith that from Abraham onwards defined and delivered the ACTUAL people of God.

So in Romans 11:2-7 Paul writes:

“God did not reject his people, whom he foreknew. Don’t you know what Scripture says in the passage about Elijah – how he appealed to God against Israel: 3 ‘Lord, they have killed your prophets and torn down your altars; I am the only one left, and they are trying to kill me’? 4 And what was God’s answer to him? ‘I have reserved for myself seven thousand who have not bowed the knee to Baal.’ 5 So too, at the present time there is a remnant chosen by grace. 6 And if by grace, then it cannot be based on works; if it were, grace would no longer be grace.

7 What then? What the people of Israel sought so earnestly they did not obtain. The elect among them did, but the others were hardened”

And then famously, of course, Paul illustrates this with the parable of breaking unfruitful branches off the olive tree and grafting wild branches onto the existing root stock … wild olives … so that they can serve the tree’s purpose of bearing fruit for God the gardener.

THAT is what was going to happen as the prophets had prophesied, that is the principle on which God had operated by preserving His faithful remnant across the history of the Old Testament people of God (he cites 7,000 in Israel in Isaiah’s day who had not bowed the knee to Baal) and that is what Paul preached and what had started to happen as the Nations were grafted into the tree of the faithful remnant from the Day of Pentecost onwards.

So back in Malachi 1 God now spells out where history is heading … a history of which we read in the New Testament and of which most of us as Gentile believers are privileged to be part of.

Malachi 1:11 “my name will be great among the nations,’ says the Lord Almighty.”

vv. 12-13 go on to contrast radically the behaviour of Israel and the honour the Nations will give their new covenanted patron …

And the verdict of God the Great King at the conclusion of this matter is:

v. 14 :  “‘Cursed is the cheat who has an acceptable male in his flock and vows to give it, but then sacrifices a blemished animal to the Lord. For I am a great king,’ says the Lord Almighty, ‘and my name is to be feared among the nations.”

Conclusion

Here’s how all that Malachi prophesies here works out.

For four hundred years the people will continue to fail in the four hundred year prophet-less silence from their Divine Patron to give Him true allegiance and they will live beneath Heavens as hard as brass.

That’s what it is like to live with an outward form of faith but no real relationship with the Holy One of God.

And there they will stay.

Until the Son of Righteousness shall arise … with healing in His wings … and the Nations will see the light in His coming, and join with the faithful remnant of the historic (Jewish) people of God in faithful allegiance to Christ the new Messiah-King.

A new people.

A new way.

A new covenant for the new covenant people of God.

One new people.

One new way.

One new faithful, grace-saved and faith-driven people for the covenant keeping God.

The Glory that had departed now restored in the redemption He has provided by grace being reflected in the heart felt worship of the one new people of God … redeemed from every nation.

Why?

Because He WILL … because He MUST … have the Glory that is due to His Name.