Introduction

I have got a beef with ‘Harvest Festivals’ … and it’s been growing, possibly, for the last thirty years or more.

Here’s what’s happened:

They’ve become centred on giving food to the food bank, and/ or focused on promoting Environmentalism.

And both those have their importance, but they are shifting attention away from the worship of God for the harvest and onto what we all have in common with humanist objectives.

Fundamentally, the providence of God himself is getting pushed off the chair.

I have sympathy having spent thirty-eight years in Christian ministry with the Minister’s desire to find something new to say … putting a fresh spin on things.

I have sympathy given the progressive alienation of the populace from the means of agricultural production with the desire to be able to sound ‘relevant’.

But not at the expense of the worship of God for His provision of food for the winter.

Where He has been faithful to us, we owe loyalty … giving Glory … to HIM for it.

Loyalty for His fathering of us … His patronage in our need should call forth loyalty, personal loyalty, loyalty to HIM.

It’s about His love, as evidenced to the objects of it, and the response we should rightly make to Him Who gives it.

Here’s how it goes in Malachi 1 …

1) God exposes refusal of covenant loyalty, v. 6a

What do YOU make of Malachi 1 here, v. 6?

““A son honours his father, and a slave his master. If I am a father, where is the honour due me? If I am a master, where is the respect due me?” says the Lord Almighty.

“It is you priests who show contempt for my name.

“But you ask, ‘How have we shown contempt for your name?’”

Keywords here are the words for ‘honour’, respect’ and ‘contempt’.

There is something going on here that we just mustn’t miss.

Covenant keeping. 

Patronage  and clientage in the pre-understanding of the readers are crucial to the understanding of Malachi.

You’ll have heard me speak of Patronage and Clientage in Covenant context before.

You’ll have heard me speak of the really helpful work of two missionaries (Jayson Georges and Mark D. Baker) returned from Patronage cultures overseas in particular in the books ‘Ministering in Honour-Shame Cultures’ and ‘Ministering in Patronage Cultures’.

The Ancient Near East and the first century Graeco-Roman world functioned as societies where patronage and clientage formed the bedrock of social structure and of interpersonal security and relationships.

It was part of the worldview we need to grasp if we’re to grasp a great deal of what goes on in God’s Book.

And it is the bedrock of prior understanding in all that Malachi 1 has got going on.

Protection, security and attempts to find prosperity in these patronage cultures depended on finding a good patron and relating properly to them.

Basically, the more affluent and powerful needed loyalty to be able to do their thing.

And in an age before the Welfare State, those who were not affluent and powerful needed patronage from the affluent and powerful to successfully cope with the vicissitudes of life.

Whether that was a family relationship (like Father-son) or a more functional than familiar one (like servant-master relationships) the principle remained the same.

Loyalty was rewarded with assistance as and when it became necessary to thrive and to get on in life.

There was such a thing, to be rigorously avoided by both sides, as ‘social debt’.

And if you as an individual or small group let the social debt down you let the side down … this is important.

PART of God’s people letting the side down was the same as ALL of God’s people letting the side down.

(Ministering in Honour-Shame Cultures 2016 p.46)

That’s how it worked in collectivistic patronage cultures like the prophet Malachi’s.

And everyone very thoroughly understood that.

A) Loyalty in patronage relationships - sons and servants

We need to grasp that (Georges & Baker 2016) “When these communal dynamics are applied to the divine-human relationship, the essence of sin is dishonouring God. Sin is disloyalty to a relationship, not merely violating a rule. Israel’s problem was that ‘their hearts were not loyal to Him [God], they were not faithful to His covenant’ (Ps. 78:37 NIV) and this brought dishonour on God.”

Georges and Baker then explicitly quote Malachi 1:6 as an example of how this worked out in Israel’s history …

Malachi 1:6 ““A son honours his father, and a slave his master. If I am a father, where is the honour due me? If I am a master, where is the respect due me?” says the Lord Almighty.”

Here’s the big deal (which don’t seem such a big deal in our culture): 

“Israel failed to glorify God. Their sin was exchanging glory for shame (see Ps. 106:20; Jer. 2:11; Rom. 1:21-23”

(Georges & Baker 2017 pp. 70-71).

Now you remember what we were saying about the shame perpetrated by one of your group in a collectivist society attaching to the rest of your group (bringing shame on the family, clan or nation)?

Let’s take a look at v. 6b …

B) The specific failures of the priesthood

Malachi 1:6b ““It is you priests who show contempt for my name.”

This here word for contempt is a strong one …

בָּזָה (ba.zah) 'to despise' 

The word comes in like a sledge-hammer three times in these two verses, vv. 6 & 7 … where God’s honour, Name and Glory should have been upheld by them as they showed gratitude for His Covenant mercies, they made it out to be despicable to them.

But in a collectivist society … this was a communal responsibility.

2) The priests’ dispute it v. 6b & 7b

Now, these first three disputations between the LORD and the people of Israel are, as we said last time, characterised by God exposing to the people things they hadn’t previously recognised that were wrong in their attitudes and behaviour.

And what happens is that the Israelites challenge what it is that God exposes in them.

It’s no different here.

A) How have we shown contempt for your Name?

Malachi 1:6 ““But you ask, ‘How have we shown contempt for your name?’”

In Romans 14 Paul tackles the question within the patronage culture of the Graeco-Roman world … as he seeks to overcome the tensions in the ethnically mixed Jewish-Gentile community of the first-century churches in Rome.

Old Covenant dietary regulations were still important to their Jewish believers in Jesus but not to the Gentile ones and it was causing a bit of friction.

In Romans 14:1-6 Paul argued that neither eating nor not eating particular things should result in either group ‘shaming’ the other with the allegation of sin.

So Romans 14:6 sums it up in this way (and the ESV is very helpful here):

“The one who observes the day, observes it in honour of the Lord. 

The one who eats, eats in honour of the Lord, since he gives thanks to God, 

while the one who abstains, abstains in honour of the Lord and gives thanks to God.”

Can you see what’s going on there?

(Georges & Baker, p. 209) “To guide the community, Paul does not offer specific commands for a particular behaviour, but explains that right action is done ‘in honour of the Lord’. Morality revolves around God-honouring faith. Bringing honour and glory to God functions as the ethical standard … According to Romans 3:23 the target all humans miss is properly glorifying God, not an impersonal legal code of moral behaviour. In Malachi, God critiques the priests because they did “not take it to heart to give honour to my Name (Mal. 2:2 NASB), but have despised and profaned God’s Name with their polluted sacrifices (Mal. 1:6-14)”

Not giving honour to the Name of the God who has given us so much is sin in both Old and New Testament, Old and New Covenant terms.

We might need to go and give that a moment to sink in.

But the LORD has more to say here …

Not only His Name but His altar are being despised.

The answer to the question: ‘How have we defiled your Name?’ Comes at the start of v. 7:

“‘By offering defiled food on my altar.”

Now look … these guys were convinced they we’re getting the ritual right, but they were concentrating on the rigmarole not the offering itself.

What they were bringing to the Lord was NOT their best offering.

Their ritual was elaborate and no doubt looked very good.

But they would bring anything and everything … not their best offering.

And if honouring the Lord your sovereign protector and provider is the ask, this simply isn’t going to cut it.

B) How have we defiled your altar?

Well, the Lord is not going to refuse them an answer to this issue they say they can’t see …

And He makes a very straightforward job of it.

3) The LORD exposes it, vv. 7-8

‘‘But you ask, “How have we defiled you?”

‘By saying that the Lord’s table is contemptible. 

8 When you offer blind animals for sacrifice, is that not wrong? When you sacrifice lame or diseased animals, is that not wrong? 

Try offering them to your governor! 

Would he be pleased with you? 

Would he accept you?’ says the Lord Almighty.”

A) Actions speaking louder than words, v. 7c

There is no WAY these guys would say out loud that the Lord’s table was contemptible … worthy of contempt.

But that is the way it so often goes with people who have lost their sense of wonder with God and fallen into formality in worship … as we were analysing and characterising their situation last time.

The Lord doesn’t respond with a critique of their words, though, but of their behaviour …

B) Offering the lame and diseased

V. 8 ““How have we defiled you?”

‘By saying that the Lord’s table is contemptible. 

8 When you offer blind animals for sacrifice, is that not wrong? 

When you sacrifice lame or diseased animals, is that not wrong?”

Well, these people knew that was wrong.

Deuteronomy (the great covenant document in the Old Testament) had told them so.

Leviticus 22:22 & Deuteronomy 15:21 had made that explicit.

Malachi 1:8’s question is entirely rhetorical “Is this not wrong?’

Yes of COURSE it was!

But they had such a low view of the Lord and the Glory He was due that they had no qualms about it.

And in that collectivist society, where everyone knew what was going on anyway, the sin of the priests also included the non-priestly Israelites.

They didn’t see God any more as the Great King … an Ancient Near Eastern concept that is going to crop up through the rest of this passage … so didn’t honour Him as such.

The Great King thing is an idea … often embodied in the use of Suzerainty language … common in Ancient Near Eastern royal treaties, the vassal treaties of the Ancient Near Eastern kings … which Deuteronomy has often been likened to.

See that theme Great King/ Suzerain theme creeping in here in the way the Lord starts to apply to their consciences the enormity of what they’d done in not giving Him the honour due …

C) A little King wouldn’t accept this so why would the Great King?

Speaking of the defiled offerings Malachi voices the Lord’s challenge:

V. 8c “Try offering them to your governor! 

Would he be pleased with you? Would he accept you?’ says the Lord Almighty.”

That word for ‘governor’ is Assyrian in origin … the language of the people who’d held Israel hostage in Babylon during the captivity … and it refers to the appointed foreign rulers from Persia.

The expression ‘would he accept you’ is ‘would he lift up your face?’

The commentaries suggest that appearing before one of those guys involved initially (and rather smartly) throwing yourself on your face in obeisance before him when you entered his presence … a stark contrast to how the Israelites were despising the Lord by their conduct in NOT giving Him the Glory He was due.

And so, in v. 9 having established His case with them, the Lord turns to the priests and challenges them to do what they are there for … clearly suggesting this isn’t going to meet with much success on account of the way they’ve been carrying on!

4) The LORD explains the covenant breakdown, v. 9

Given the rationale that’s been spelled out in this exposé of the underlying - clearly unacknowledged situation - the Lord spells out the implications of the priests’ conduct for the covenant.

No more loyalty?

Then there’ll be no more patronage.

So much for the exposure of the folly of their behaviour inside the covenant.

Here God declares … catastrophically … that where the covenant loyalty evaporates, so does the experience of immediate blessing.

The covenant loyalty has gone and so therefore does the covenant comfort.

There are two parts to this verse …

V. 9 “ ‘Now plead with God to be gracious to us. With such offerings from your hands, will he accept you?’– says the Lord Almighty.”

Here comes the practical test of all that Malachi’s related as from the Lord.

Try praying NOW that you’ve insulted your Heavenly Patron by not giving Him the honour that it was your obligation to.

Let’s see how that goes for you!

A) Beg the Lord’s face

We seem to be still in the situation of the throne room of the Persia -appointed Governor here … you’ve entered and thrown yourself down but there’s absolutely no hope that having insulted his honour he will have lifted your face from the dust to look him in the face and ‘beg his face’ … as the Hebrew has it.

You see, you need to close with him, to relate to him personally to be able to entreat him for whatever it is that you have come to ask him for.

But all their actions of not honouring God have destroyed the chance of fulfilling the face to face with God that they’re supposed to exist to do for the people of the covenant.

If the fundamental relationship is shattered by its defilement, well … honour denied: patronage denied.

Face to face swapped for formality: your prayers for mercy are not going to be heard very well from a prone position face down in the dust.

B) For favour

The Hebrew is saying … seek the face of God to 

חָנַן (cha.nan) 'be gracious'

Now, there’s the responsibility of the Divine Patron.

But how will things go when patronage is sought when honour has been denied so consistently for so long?

You have effectively disconnected yourself from the entire Patronage - clientage relationship!

And it is at THAT point, as if realising by expressing the situation, that the Lord flows into a long Divine lament at the realities of the situation He has just exposed, and a further exposé of where that’s now going to lead as the inevitable consequence of the death of the relationship gets unfolded.

And this is EARTH-SHATTERING.

But they simply hadn’t realised the extent of what they had done, and gone sleep walking into these terrible consequences.

5) The LORD laments it, vv. 10-14

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.”

a) Rejects their worthless worship, v. 10

‘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.

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.

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

We see places once dedicated to God’s service closing around us fairly regularly across Wales when the Word and the hearts of the people have been let go of.

But 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.

Their so-called worship is worthless, so He announces His intention to do something immense …

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?[d] 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 from living faith.

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

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

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

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 …

b) 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!

His Name will be great amongst the historic enemies of God and His people.

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 …

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

v. 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

Such a dramatic juncture in salvation history has been laid bare in this great exposé in Malachi 1.

God’s people haven’t glorified Him for His care as they were designed to do, so for four hundred dreadful years the prophets will fall silent.

Their loyalty has withered, and so He withdraws His patronage … He has been patient but at the end of the day this is a situation that will not be allowed to persist.

We have seen chapels up and down the land of Wales presenting microcosms of this up and down the land of Wales since the last religious awakenings – revivals – of the 20th century.

If the people lose their wonder and settle for formality then the loyalty goes and the patronage eventually gets withdrawn.

For four hundred years the corrupted God-dishonouring formal and not awestruck rituals of the temple will continue in Jerusalem.

For four hundred years they will lie face down where you really can’t either see or seek the Lord’s face for His favour.

For four hundred years the people will fail in that 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.

A new people.

A new way.

A new covenant for the new covenant people of God.

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

Introduction

1) God exposes refusal of covenant loyalty, v. 6a

A) Loyalty in patronage relationships - sons and servants

B) The specific failures of the priesthood

2) The priests’ dispute it v. 6b & 7b

A) How have we shown contempt for your Name?

B) How have we defiled your altar?

3) The LORD exposes it, vv. 7-8

A) Actions speaking louder than words, v. 7c

B) Offering the lame and diseased

C) A little King wouldn’t accept this so why would the Great King?

4) The LORD explains the covenant breakdown, v. 9

A) Beg the Lord’s face

B) For favour

5) The LORD laments it, vv. 10-14

a) Rejects their worthless worship, v. 10

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

i)          The Nations

ii)         Incense everywhere

iii)        Pure offerings offered everywhere

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

Conclusion