So naturally after finishing Acts, the next logical book is Malachi. The reason I chose Malachi is practical, personal and theological. Practically we have 4 Sundays (not including Mother's day) before the summer starts, and I wanted to finish this book before everyone scatters for the summer! On a personal level, I love the minor prophets! And theologically, it is good to be reminded of some things about God. Especially after a whole book where I challenged them to "do" something every Sunday.
So with that being said, we launched into Malachi 1 this past Sunday. I really enjoyed studying this chapter. In the first 5 verses there is so much packed in there that we would have been there for 2 hours unpacking everything! With that being said, I will probably have to do another post about the Jacaob-Esau motif that is used by Malachi to illustrate God's love for his people.
The point of the first part of Malachi is that God has loved us perfectly, even though we are continually unfaithful to His covenant. The Israelites forget this and "ask when have you loved us?" In other words, they were implying that God has not loved them at all, or at least not loved them the way they thought they were supposed to be loved. They are still a weak nation. They are still small, and they are rather poor. They have just returned from exile where they suffered great humiliation, and to them it seems like they have suffered all for nothing. So Malachi reminds them that they are still God's covenant people, and reminds them basically that even though they had whored themselves out to other things, God has been with them and loved them through everything and has brought them out of exile, and had destroyed Edom because of their opposition to his covenant people. So really the Lord's response in layman's terms is "You have got to be kidding me, how can you even say that!?" It is equivalent to the friend who always asks you for favors and then after 25 times in a row of saying yes and doing whatever it is he/she needs, you say "no" one time and they get all huffy and say "I thought we were friends!" I know this illustration breaks down at some point, but the issue here is that Israel has benefitted greatly from God establishing a covenant with them, and when things don't turn out like they want it to, they ask God "when have you loved us?" Perhaps this is something to think about when we are going through rough times, and to be grateful that we have a God who is still deeply concerned, and deeply in love with his covenant people, even when it is not tangible to us at the time.
The second half of the first chapter (and going on into chapter 2, through v. 9) deals with the priests accepting sacrifices to the Lord that are specifically forbidden in Leviticus. In short, this deals with the issue of lack of fear (reverence for the Lord). The whole situation is summed up when God says (through Malachi), "you wouldn't even bring this to your governor, and yet you bring it to me?" They are bringing sacrifices to God that wouldn't even be acceptable to a fallen, sinful human being, and they are trying to pawn off these things to God!? Moral of the story: take God seriously!
It seems to me that, at least in the Western Cuture, and particularly in the Bible Belt, we have this tendency to view worship with this contemptuous attitude. In other words, we really don't focus on God throughout the week, and we simply show up to church hoping to "experience" or "feel" something. When in reality, the Scriptures are full of passages that condemn this attitude. We have whole book (Leviticus) dedicated to how things should be prepared for worship and what is acceptable and unacceptable when it comes to offering something in worship. Now we don't have the need for animal sacrifices anymore, but we do have our lives to offer. And this attitude of simply coming to worship services because of what we might get out of it, or because we think that somehow it will appease God and he might have mercy on us is wrong and irreverent! God says in Malachi, it would be better for the doors to be shut and worship not to go on, than to do what you are doing. In fact, the passage in Malachi even says that their prayers are not heard by Yahweh because of their irreverent attitude!! In 1 Peter 3:7 it warns husbands who are mistreating their wives, that their prayers can be hindered. Honestly I have never been taught that there are some things that I can do, or a lifestyle that I can live that will cause the Lord to have deaf ears when it comes to my prayers and the things I offer him. This passage really caused me to reevaluate how I prepare for worship each Sunday, and not only that, it has caused me to reevaluate the way I live my life. It has caused me to always be reminded that the sacrifice I bring to the Lord is my very life. I am either living for him, or I am living in opposition to Him. There really is no other option.
May we evaluate our lives, and may they be pleasing to God. May our worship be pleasing to God because of the sacrifice that we offer to Him.
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