MALACHI 1 - INSINCERE WORSHIP
Malachi 1
The Book of Malachi is the last book of the Old Testament. It was written several decades after the decree in 538 B.C. from the Persian King Cyrus which ended the Babylonian exile of the Jewish people and allowed them to return to their homeland to rebuild Jerusalem and the Temple. As such, it was the last direct written revelation from God to His people until the coming of Jesus Christ and the writing of the New Testament.
When Jerusalem and the Temple were rebuilt, there was an effort by some of the Jewish people to return to God’s Word and live accordingly. However, by the time of Malachi, many of the people were keeping God’s Word in the flesh, but not by the Spirit, so their hearts were not in it. Although the physical structure of the Temple had been rebuilt, it is evident from what Malachi writes, especially in Malachi 3:1, that the manifestations of God’s presence, or of His Shekinah glory, which had been so evident during the times of the first Temple, were absent. There was therefore, what might be referred to as a dead orthodoxy that prevailed in the land.
The Holy Spirit was absent from the hearts of the people, and thus He was absent from the place where they gathered to worship Him.
So, God called the prophet Malachi to confront them and call them to repentance. Malachi starts his message in Malachi 1:1 by referring to it as an “oracle”, which in Hebrew literally meant “a burden.” The truth about the degraded spiritual condition of God’s people was a real burden on Malachi’s heart, as well as on the heart of God. In verses 2-3, we see that God declares His love for His people, yet they question His love, most likely because the circumstances of life back in their homeland was not all they had hoped it would be. Although the decree of Cyrus allowed all of the Jewish people to return home, historians estimate that only about 150,000 did so. Worse yet, they were still under Persian rule, did not have their own nation, and the size of their land was much smaller than it had been under the glory days of David and Solomon.
The people had expected God’s blessing because of their decision to return to their homeland, but instead they found nothing but difficult circumstances.
They mistakenly interpreted this as meaning that God did not love them. What they did not understand was that God’s love for His people is not dependent on circumstances, and His love for us can never be measured by how good our circumstances are. As Jesus said in Matt. 5: 45, God causes the sun to shine and the rain to fall on both the just and the unjust. God loves His people solely because He in His sovereign grace chooses to do so. His love for us is rooted in His character and will, not on our performance, and His love for us cannot be determined or measured by our circumstances. Malachi uses the illustration of God’s choice to set His love on Jacob to illustrate this point.
In verses 5, 11, and 14, God declares that He desires His greatness to be known by people outside the borders of Israel. Yet, that will occur only as the outside world sees His people actually live their lives as if He is truly great, and that is the issue that Malachi confronts in the rest of Chapter 1. God’s people were not worshipping Him in a pure and sincere way. As a result, He declares in Vs. 10 that He has no pleasure in them and will not even accept their offerings.
Like the Jewish people, we as Christians, have been chosen by God to reflect His glory, not just when we are gathered as the church, but also to the unbelieving world around us.
Yet, we cannot possibly do that if our love for Him is not pure and sincere. Ps. 24:3-4 tells us that God wants those who worship Him to do so with clean hands and a pure heart, and Rom. 12:9 says that our love for God should be without hypocrisy. This type of love and worship is simply not possible without the work of the Holy Spirit. That is why Jesus tells the Samaritan woman in John 4 that God desires worshippers who will worship Him in Spirit and truth.
Dead orthodoxy, or truth without the Spirit, brings God no pleasure or glory, and it will not reflect His greatness to outsiders. We all need to be on guard against being like the people to whom Malachi wrote. John 16:14 tells us that it is the role of the Holy Spirit to glorify Jesus. Therefore, we can only glorify Him the way He wants and deserves to be glorified if we allow the Holy Spirit to do it in and through us.