Written by: Laurence Singlehurst - YWAM

Malachi 2 v 13-16
This is another thing you do. You cover the LORD’s altar with your tears. You cry and moan, because he does not accept your offerings and is not pleased with what you bring. You ask, “Why?” It is because the LORD sees how you treated the wife you married when you were young. You broke your promise to her, even though she was your partner and you had an agreement with her. God made husbands and wives to become one body and one spirit for his purpose—so they would have children who are true to God.
So be careful, and do not break your promise to the wife you married when you were young.
Te LOhRD God of Israel says, “I hate divorce. And I hate people who do cruel things as easily as they put on clothes,” says the LORD All-Powerful.
So be careful. And do not break your trust.

Notes
The importance of promises

In this passage we hear God’s anger about the breaking of promises, as it related in the time of Malachi. But this, in a sense, is a very modern issue, not just as it relates to marriage, but it is how we relate to life. Do we live life in the power of our feelings and stay true to something as long as we feel good about it, and then if things are difficult, move on to something else? Or do we bring our lives in line with God’s truth, regardless as to how we might feel about it and keep our promises to God and anybody else we might make them to? Tony Campolo told a recent story of a Christian leader who gave up his promising spiritual career to look after a sick wife, because of the promises he had made. Tony Campolo said this man may not be happy, but he is good. In our modern society we have the triumph of happiness over goodness. The call of God is for us to have goodness over happiness.

Malachi 2 v 17-18
You have tired the LORD with your words.
You ask, “How have we tired him?”
You did it by saying, “The LORD thinks anyone who does evil is good, and he is pleased with them.” Or you asked, “Where is the God who is fair?”

Notes
Where is the God who is fair?

The children of Israel had become confused about what was right and wrong, shaped by their neighbours’ values, they began to call what was evil as good. The prophet rallied against them. They said, ‘Where is the God who is fair?’ Is this relevant for us today? Do we need to ask this question? Is it not the case that our society has certainly gone down a journey where once the things that were evil are now good, and our morality is out there on the seas of people’s personal preferences. Whatever you want to be good is good. We live in a world where moral absolute is disappearing at a fast rate. We live in a pick and mix moral society; people live with this question in their minds, where is the God who is fair? As we will see in these daily readings, He is here and we confuse right and wrong in the end to our own peril. In the end we will not make a better society, but a sadder one.

Malachi 3 v 1-4
The LORD All-Powerful says, “I will send my messenger, who will prepare the way for me. Suddenly, the Lord you are looking for will come to his Temple; the messenger of the agreement, whom you want, will come.” No one can live through that time; no one can survive when he comes. He will be like a purifying fire and like laundry soap. Like someone who heats and purifies silver, he will purify the Levites and make them pure like gold and silver. Then they will bring offerings to the LORD in the right way. And the LORD will accept the offerings from Judah and Jerusalem, as it was in the past.

Notes
He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver.

The prophet Malachi was speaking in days of old to say God is really in control even if it doesn’t look like it. Here again is a challenge to our post-modern society. In our post modern society, we are in control, we choose for ourselves what is right and wrong, we make our own judgements, we live as if we are in control. There are no consequences. But Malachi spoke strongly to the people of Israel who thought like this as well. In the end, he says, God will purify, God will test, God will see what is wood, timber, silver or gold. This cry, though more than 2000 years old, is as relevant to us as it was to them. Let us bear in mind that one day a testing will take place. Let us live in the light of the fact that there is a loving God and He is in control and He is asking us to walk in His ways, not our own.

Malachi 3 v 5
The LORD All-Powerful says, “Then I will come to you and judge you. I will be quick to testify against those who take part in evil magic, adultery, and lying under oath, those who cheat workers of their pay and who cheat widows and orphans, those who are unfair to foreigners, and those who do not respect me.

Notes
The cry of this passage is that God will judge us, not only for our magic, adultery and lying, but also that we cheat workers in their pay, and if we cheat widows and orphans. It is interesting to note here that God is as interested in people’s personal morality as He is in their social morality. The prophet was challenging people to have lives that were personally true, but was also looking at the way they did business: the salaries they paid, how they treated the poor and the needy. Is this an issue for us today? I think so. The challenge for the church is, yes our personal morality is very important, but if in the end, there is not a social justice element to our Christian lives, if we are not concerned as employers about the salaries that we pay, are they fair, if we are not concerned about how we treat the underprivileged, then in a sense we have a weak Christianity, that in the end will make very little difference to the world about us. Let us heed to the cry of the prophet to live right both personally and socially.

Malachi 3 v 6-8
“I the LORD do not change. So you descendants of Jacob have not been destroyed. Since the time of your ancestors, you have disobeyed my rules and have not kept them. Return to me, and I will return to you,” says the LORD All-Powerful.
“But you ask, ‘How can we return?’
“Should a person rob God? But you are robbing me.
“You ask, ‘How have we robbed you?’
“You have robbed me in your offerings and the tenth of your crops.

Notes
Return to me and I will return to you says the Lord all powerful.

Here is one of the great promises of the Bible, the great revealing of the character of God, the simple whisper that comes from heaven again and again, is ‘return to me and I will forgive.’ A whisper in the Old Testament becomes a shout in the New Testament through the death and resurrection of Jesus. We can return and be forgiven. Oh what a wonder, however bad, however stupid we are, the arms of God are wide. So today, let us avail ourselves and turn and come back. A man who experienced this in the New Testament, Zacheus, a tax collector, an outcast, experienced one day that he could return.

But he realised that as he experienced God’s love and generosity, it had an implication for him, and the implication was restitution. He made good that which he had taken. He allowed the generosity of God’s heart to make his heart generous. Let us experience the full power of returning to God, but let it change our own hearts, that we become givers.

Malachi 3 v 9-12
So a curse is on you, because the whole nation has robbed me. Bring to the storehouse a full tenth of what you earn so there will be food in my house. Test me in this,” says the LORD All-Powerful. “I will open the windows of heaven for you and pour out all the blessings you need. I will stop the insects so they won’t eat your crops. The grapes won’t fall from your vines before they are ready to pick,” says the LORD All-Powerful. “All the nations will call you blessed, because you will have a pleasant country,” says the LORD All-Powerful.

Notes
Bring to the storehouse a full tenth of what you earn so that there will be food in my house. Test me in this, says the Lord all powerful.

As we have already seen, generosity is already in the heart of God’s character. He wants to restore us to relationship with Himself. But He is challenging us to become like Him and be generous. Here we see the Biblical imperative of tithing. But through the New Testament, these imperatives are explored as values, and Jesus, in a sense, abolishes the imperatives, the
Law, and asks a more profound question and more profound challenge. It is give all, it is that we become stewards of all that we have, and God is asking us to be generous. For some, their generosity might be a tenth, might even be less; for others, it might be a great deal more. But not just with our money. This idea is picked up in the New Testament as hospitality. Let us be generous with our homes. Let us rebuild community through the simple generosity of hospitality.

Malachi 3 v 13-15
The LORD says, “You have said terrible things about me.
“But you ask, ‘What have we said about you?’
“You have said, ‘It is useless to serve God. It did no good to obey his laws and to show the LORD All-Powerful that we were sorry for what we did. So we say that proud people are happy. Evil people succeed. They challenge God and get away with it.’ ”

Notes
You have said it is useless to serve God.

The prophet Malachi was addressing the issue of justice. The people of Israel had raised the age- old question ‘Why do the evil people prosper? What is the point of serving God when evil people succeed. They seem to challenge God and get away with it.’ Time may go by, but interestingly, the issues often remain the same. There is much evil in our world today, and maybe we still have that question, why does evil triumph? But let us remind ourselves of some of the things that the prophet has already said: in the end God will test, and He is in control. Evil may seem to triumph for a few years, but it will only be for a few in the light of eternity, they will not triumph.

Let us perhaps take on board the hope that the early New Testament church had, that they realised they were citizens of heaven and earth. In their citizenship on earth, there may not always be apparent justice, but in the citizenship of heaven, there will be. They sought to demonstrate to the evil Roman Empire a different way. They challenged the evil by their love and within a few hundred years, the empire had gone and much of that Roman Empire had been touched by the gospel of Christ. That is the challenge for us today. Let us not respond to evil by questioning God’s character, but let our lives be a challenge to evil by the quality of our love.


word-on-the-web uses the Scripture text taken from the Youth Bible, New Century Version (Anglicised Edition) copyright 1993 by Word Publishing Milton Keynes