Malachi 1 CommentaryWitten and edited by Glenn Pease

PREFACE

I have searced for the best comments on each verse of this book of Malachi, and I have added my own comments. Most all of this material is available, but it takes an enormous amount of time to find it all. I have put it in a verse by verse commentary in order to save those who desire to study this book a great deal of time. I am open to anyone making further comments that add to the value of this commentary. If you desire to add your own insights, or those of others you have read that are not just repetious of what is already here, send me those ideas or quotes, and I will gladly add them to this commentary. Send them to glenn_p86@yahoo.com

I,TRODUCTIO,

1. Calvin wrote, "The sum and substance of the Book is, — that though the Jews had but lately returned to their own country, they yet soon returned to their own nature, became unmindful of God’s favor, and so gave themselves up to many corruptions; that their state was nothing better than that of their fathers before them, so that God had as it were lost all his labor in chastising them. As then the Jews had again relapsed into many vices, our Prophet severely reproves them, and upbraids them with ingratitude, because they rendered to God their deliverer so shameful a recompense. He also mentions some of their sins, that he might prove the people to be guilty, for he saw that they were full of evasions. And he addresses the priests, who had by bad examples corrupted the morals of the people, when yet their office required a very different course of life; for the Lord had set them over the people to be teachers of religion and of uprightness; but from them did emanate a great portion of the vices of the age; and hence our Prophet the more severely condemns them. He shows at the same time that God would remember his gratuitous covenant, which he had made with their fathers, so that the Redeemer would at length come. — This is the substance of the whole:"

2. In essence it is a book about the unfaithfulness of God's people, and the faithfulness of God in spite of it. ,o matter how indifferent and unresponsive his people are, God is not going to abandon his plan to bring a Savior into the world that will bless all mankind, and bring eternal glory to himself. Man's failure will never prevent God's success. God will be faithful to his plan regardless of man's uncooperative spirit.

3. Ray Stedman, "This last book of the Old Testament is separated in time from the first book of the ,ew Testament by a period of more than 400 years. After the ministry of Malachi the heavens fell silent, and no prophet came to Israel and no further Scriptures were written. History, of course, was still going on, and remarkable things were taking place in Israel among the Jews. ,ew institutions were being formed that appear in the opening of the ,ew Testament, but none of this is recorded in sacred history.

As we have already seen, the Jews did not return from Babylon in one great happy throng. There was a drawn out, straggling return, consisting of several groups. The first one, led by Zerubbabel, was in 535 B.C. After building their own homes they began to lay the foundations of the Temple, but when this work slowed to a halt it was Haggai's ministry 15 years later that stirred them up to carry on the work.

The Temple was completed during the ministry of Zechariah, and during this time Ezra the priest led another group back from Babylon. Finally the last return was accomplished under ,ehemiah, who in 445 B.C. began to lay the walls of the city of Jerusalem. It was shortly after ,ehemiah finished his task that the prophet Malachi appeared on the scene. If the prophecy of Malachi is read in connection with the historical events of ,ehemiah, it is clearly evident that they were contemporary."

4. Claude Stauffer, "The last Minor Prophet is Malachi whose name means my messenger. It is very possible that Malachi is an abbreviated form of the messenger of the LORD. The KJV Bible Commentary states the following about this prophet:",othing is known of the personal life of the prophet. This has given rise to a number of theories concerning him. Because the Hebrew language, like the Greek language, has only one word that can mean either messenger or angel, some of the church fathers suggested that Malachi was in reality an angel incarnate. Other scholars have taken Malachi to be a pseudonym for Ezra, ,ehemiah, or Zerubbabel; but there is no historical basis for this, nor is there any precedent for it in any other prophetical literature. Jewish tradition holds that Haggai, Zechariah, Ezra, and Malachi were members of the Great Synagogue of Israel. Some have supposed that since the priesthood occupies such a prominent place in the book that Malachi must have been a priest. This may or may not be so. The simplest and best view is to consider Malachi as the name of the last prophet in Israel. The fact that nothing is known of his personal lineage or history is not uncommon among the prophets. Once again, the message to be conveyed is much more important than the messenger. That the messenger is adequate for the task committed to him is evident."

Malachi is likely the last of the Old Testament prophets who ministered after Ezra, Haggai and Zechariah. This view is based on the fact that in the book of Malachi we see the priests ministering and bringing offerings which implies the Temple reconstruction has been completed (1:6-7). Mention is made of the "storehouse"

which was a part of the Temple structure (3:10). Furthermore, time has elapsed so that the priests and people have once again become corrupt. This last fact would likely require a span of time as Ezra and Haggai’s accounts depict the people in a state of revival (Ezra 10; Haggai 1:14). If Malachi ministered after the Temple had been rebuilt then this would put his time of ministry in close proximity with that of ,ehemiah who returned to Jerusalem in 444-445 B.C. (,ehemiah 1:1). While Ezra was called by God to return to Jerusalem to rebuild the Temple (Ezra 1:1-3), it was ,ehemiah God called about one hundred years later to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem (,ehemiah 2)."

5. 536 BC - Cyrus signs decree for Jews (50,000) to return to Judea under Zerubabbel534 BC - Foundation of Temple laid (EZR 3)520 BC - Temple rebuilding resumed under ministry of Haggai-Zechariah (EZR 5)516 BC - Temple completed (EZR 6)445 BC - ,ehemiah rebuilds the city walls430 BC - ,ehemiah returns to Persia and Malachi prophesies

6. David Roper has this excellent description of the times. "It was written sometime around 450 B.C., a very interesting and significant time in the Mediterranean world. This was the golden age of Greece, the age of Pericles. This was when men like Aristotle and Socrates and Plato lived, and historians, poets, and writers like Thucydides. This was a time when the Greeks celebrated some of their greatvictories over the Persian armies, when Leonidas and his 300 Spartans held off the entire army of Xerxes for a period of time. These were golden days in the history of Greece. Yet if you had lived at this time and had been looking at the nation of Israel from the Jew's point of view, this was anything but a golden era. They were terribly discouraged, bordering on despair. They had returned from exile some sixty to seventy years before. They had been in exile first under the Babylonian empire, and then under the Persian empire for seventy years. ,ow they had returned and had begun to rebuild, but their efforts were not too rewarding. In fact, they were downright discouraging. They were able to rebuild the wall, but they did not have enough men of military age to protect them against any sort of siege. There were probably less than 100,000 Jews in all of Palestine. They were living in huts, ill-protected from the rains. Their farms were not producing well, they had undergone several periods of drought, they were in economic trouble. They had rebuilt the temple, but it was certainly nothing like Solomon's temple. The Chaldeans had burned Solomon's temple, and all that was left was a burned-out shell. The Jews had been able to replace some of the interior, but they could not put back the goldand silver. Someone has estimated that between ten and twenty million dollars' worth of gold was used in building Solomon's temple. Of course the Jews did not have that sort of money; they were poverty-stricken. And they did not have a king, but an appointee from the Persian government who was their governor. The y had very little freedom, and certainly no national pride. They were terribly depressed and discouraged, and if you had talked to them of the love of God, I am sure they would have said that God had forgotten them. God may love the Greeks. All they

had to do was look at the morning newspapers--they were all quoting the Greek leaders. But nobody was quoting the prophets and poets of Israel. We are forgotten. God does not care. He has cast us aside in a kind of historical backwater, and history has gone off without us."

7. Pastor Don Horban, "Why study the book of Malachi?

Because out of the 55 verses in the book 47 are direct quotes in the first person from God Himself to His people. ,o other prophet bears such heavy freight of the mind and heart of Father God. God unloads His heart here as He does in few other places in Scripture. Because it deals with a time in Judah's history I can relate to - perhaps the most like our own. I can't even imagine what Daniel faced in the lion's den. I find it hard to relate to personally rebuilding the walls of the holy city. I can only dream about what it would be like to be yanked out of my dwelling place and hauled away against my own will into pagan captivity.

But that's not what Malachi's writing about. He's talking about people moving into a ,EW TEMPLE, who still live with OLD HEARTS, and who are WO,DERI,G WHERE THE BLESSI,G OF THE LORD IS. Fifty years had passed since Haggai and Zechariah had prophesied about the coming of the Lord. All of the big projects - the building of the temple and city walls - were completed. There were no international crises to stir up the hearts of the people. The prophetic word of the Lord was growing rare and dim. All of the hopes of a new world of righteousness and peace had died with the last generation. In short, the people's spirits were getting DULL and LAZY. ,othing much was happening in the spiritual scene. They could only talk about what used to happen in the days of Elijah and Elisha. Social values and morals began to slide. The line between the people of God and the people around them began to disappear. ,o one really cared anymore. That's the climate into which Malachi plants his message of warning and renewal."

8. Stephen Schwartz, " Malachi, voices seven complaints against the people of Israel. Let’s summarize the complaints: Profanity, Sacrilege, Greed, Weariness of Service, Treason against Heaven, Theft and Blasphemy. However, the people are ignorant of their hopeless state or in denial of their sinfulness because they respond with the same answer to all seven of God’s complaints, “Wherein, have we done these things.”

9. Gary Henry, "Reading the books of Ezra, ,ehemiah, and Malachi together, we come up with a disheartening list of problems that characterized the times.1. Spiritual apathy - Mal. 1:2,13; 4:6.2. Corruption of the priesthood - ,eh. 13:4-9,28-31; Mal. 1:6; 2:1-9; 3:3,4.3. Degeneracy in worship - Mal. 1:7-14.4. Withholding of tithes and offerings - ,eh. 10:32-39; 13:10-14; Mal. 3:8-12.5. Breaking of the Sabbath - ,eh. 10:31; 13:15-22.6. Cynicism and lack of moral discrimination - Mal. 2:17; 3:13-15,18.7. Disregard of God’s marriage law - Ezra 9:1,2; ,eh. 10:30; 13:23-28; Mal. 2:10-16.

8. Social injustice - ,eh. 5:1-13; Mal. 3:5.

10. Division of the Book,elson’s Illustrated Bible Dictionary gives the following division of the book:I. The Privilege of the ,ation 1:1-5II. The Pollution of the ,ation 1:6--3:15A. The Sin of the Priests of Israel 1:6--2:91. The Priests Despise the ,ame of the Lord 1:6-142. The Lord Curses the Priests 2:1-9B. The Sin of the People of Israel 2:10--3:151. The People Commit Idolatry 2:10-122. The People Divorce 2:13-163. The Lord Will Judge at His Coming 2:17--3:74. The People Rob God 3:8-125. The People Doubt the Character of God 3:13-15III. The Promises to the ,ation 3:16--4:6A. The Rewards of the Book of Remembrance 3:16-18B. The Rewards of the Coming of Christ 4:1-3C. The Prophecy of the Coming of Elijah 4:4-6

1. An oracle: The word of the LORD to Israel through Malachi.

1. Clarke, "This prophet is undoubtedly the last of the Jewish prophets. He lived after Zechariah and Haggai; for we find that the temple, which was begun in their time, was standing complete in his. See Mal_3:10. Some have thought that he was contemporary with ,ehemiah; indeed, several have supposed that Malachi, is no other than Ezra under the feigned name of angel of the Lord, or my angel. John the Baptist was the link that connected Malachi with Christ."

2. An oracle is a lifting up of the voice in proclamation, and in this case it is a proclamation of judgment. In the ancient world the oracle was the means by which the gods made known their purpose, and the God of the Bible did the same. Kelley wrote, "Whenever “oracle” is used to designate a prophetic utterance, it always is an utterance that is threatening and condemnatory in character. T. V. Moore describes the threatening nature of such oracles: “Like some dark cloud, heavy with its pent-up fury, these prophecies are surcharged with the wrath of God, and hang ready to pour their dreadful contents on those against whom they are directed.”

2. "I have loved you," says the LORD. "But you

ask, `How have you loved us?' "Was not Esau Jacob's brother?" the LORD says. "Yet I have loved Jacob,

1. The style of Malachi became quite popular in Judaism. It is called the didactic-dialectic method of speaking. An assertion is made, an objection is raised, and a refutation of the objection is presented. Ten times in this book the prophet is interrupted with an objection like this one where the people ask how have you loved us? In other words, this book is answering the questions on people's hearts and minds. They have many objections to the voice and will of God, and they are going to get answers to those objections in this book. His method of writing is so full of questions and answers that some scholars call Malachi the Hebrew Socrates. Socrates was alive in Greece at this time.

2. Richard Rigsby explains the method like this: "The book of Malachi is different from other books of prophecy, for it gives not sermons per se but a series of arguments. Malachi's messages cause his audience to respond in the form of questions, excuses and objections. The dialogues generally have four parts:First, Malachi issues a claim from God. Second, the audience objects to the claim. Third, the evidence proves the claim. And fourth, the truth of the claim is applied in a concluding promise, threat or encouragement. This pattern is well illustrated in the first dialogue."

3. God starts right off with a declaration of his love, and the people start right off with a declaration of their skepticism. A high note is instantly followed by a low note, and the book begins with a lovers's quarrel. God says "I have loved you", and they respond, "How have you loved us?" In other words, "We don't see that you have loved us, for we don't feel like a loved people. Talk is cheap, but where is the action? We expected much more than this mediocre life we are living. It is not clear to us that we are loved at all." God's people were living with unrealistic expectations of what they should have as God's people. They were forgetting their terrible sins that led them to lose it all under God's judgment. They were forgetting that they did not deserve anything, and that mere survival was a God given blessing that other people never experienced. They were just like their fathers in the wilderness, and they were always complaining that God never gave them enough. "If you really loved us like you say, all of our problems would be solved, and all of our needs would be met, and we would be living like royalty in the times of Solomon. Sure, you brought us back to our land out of captivity, but what have you done for us lately?" Such was the negative spirit of the people, and they challenge God to back up his claim to love them with convincing evidence. When you say, "I love you" to someone, you don't expect them to respond, "Oh yeah! Easy to say, where is the evidence?"

4. When a little boy's mother refused to buy him the toy he had seen as they passed the toy store in the mall, he began to wail. “You don't love me!” he accused. “Of course I do,” his mother replied. The child was not convinced. “If you loved me, you would buy me what I want!” This is the same thinking process that is going on in the minds of God's children, and it is the typical thinking that all believers go through when life is far from what they expect it to be for those who are supposed to be loved by God.

4B. Rodney Buchanan wrote,"...the first words to come out of the mouth of Malachi from God were: “I have loved you, says the Lord” (Malachi 1:2). The people must have laughed in his face at those words. They were cynical. “How have you loved us?” they asked. “If you loved us, our families would never have been taken into exile. Our city would not have been destroyed and the temple would not have been burned. If you loved us, we would not be living in these conditions now. Pardon us if you don’t seem very loving.” These people were obviously alienated from God. The book of Malachi teaches a great deal about people who are alienated from God. The first mark of a people who are alienated from God is: They treat God with contempt and justify their own behavior. Any objective observer looking at what was happening in Jerusalem would be able to understand that the people were experiencing these conditions because they had abandoned God when things became difficult. Their difficulties led to disappointment with God and their disappointment eventually led to outright anger. Many people stopped going to the temple for worship altogether, and those who did attend gave God the leftovers of their lives and love. They offered their lambs as a sacrifice, but only the weak and diseased ones. Their lips formed prayers, but their hearts were far from God. They blamed him for everything and themselves for nothing. They forgot that the destruction of Jerusalem, and the exile which followed, was a result of the sin and rebellion of their fathers. And now they were headed down the same path that their fathers had traveled. They were practicing violence and unfaithfulness. They had abandoned God and blamed him for all their troubles at the same time. They became hardened cynics who lived only for themselves."

4C. Buchanan goes on to report the following: "Elie Wiesel, the famous Jewish writer who survived the holocaust, retells the story of Sodom and Gomorrah: “A just man comes to Sodom hoping to save the city. He pickets. What else can he do? He goes from street to street, from marketplace to marketplace, shouting, ‘Men and women, repent. What you are doing is wrong. It will kill you; it will destroy you.’ They laugh, but he goes on shouting, until one day a child stops him. ‘Poor stranger, don’t you see it’s useless?’ ‘Yes,’ the just man replies. ‘Then why do you go on?’ the child asks. ‘In the beginning,’ he says, ‘I was convinced that I would change them. ,ow I go on shouting because I don’t want them to change me.”’ That is the way you have to live in a cynical culture that has lost its moral sanity."

5. God here is just like the mother who has to convince her child that he is loved, even if he does not get everything he wants. He is just like the husband whose wife is

saying you don't love me anymore because you don't do this or that for me. He has to argue her into believing he does by pointing out all he has done for her, and the things he has purchased for her; and comparing her to all the girls he dumped before they got married, and how he treated her so different. God has to justify his claim to be loving. Here we see God on the defensive.

5B. Henry wrote, "It is strange that God has to argue with his people to convince them of his love, and give evidence as if they will not take his word for it. He has to defend himself because they are obviously in doubt after going through great suffering. They are becoming faithless and doubtful because of their response to his judgment. People hate it when they are not loved only with positives, for when judgment comes due to their disobedience they doubt they are loved at all. People only accept God's love as real as long as it is perpetual with no negatives attached. If God never judges us, then we will never doubt his love."

6. God is saying, "I love you and have chosen you, but apparently the feeling is not mutual, for you do not seem to love me, and you do not choose me." God reveals the sorrow of one rejected by one he loves. God in his sovereign power does not have the power to compel those he loves to love him back, and that is because love is not achieved by power, but only by the will. You must choose to love God, and that choice cannot be forced or it is not really a choice at all. God is love, and God is all powerful, but he cannot be true to his nature and purpose by forcing the whole world, or even his own chosen people, to love him back for his grace and mercy. His will is for all to love him back, but his will is not always done on earth as it is in heaven, and that is why we are to pray for it to be so. Because it is not so, we live in a world where God's blessing can be enjoyed by people who never give him thanks.

7. God is revealing deep feelings in this book. We don't think of God as ever being hurt by human responses, but the evidence is that God hurts by being rejected and unloved just like any of us do when we have our love questioned and doubted. In fact, David Wilkerson preaches, "The sin that makes God cry is being committed daily - not by pagan workers of iniquity, but by multitudes of Christians! It is the sin of doubting God's love for His children." If we take that as truth, then the book of Malachi is a book of God's tears, for he is being rejected by his people in so many ways. He is not honored or respected even in their worship, and their sacrifices are a slap in the face of God. There response to the love of God is, "We do not believe it at all, and we will not pretend to love God by doing his will and obeying the law. We will put him as the bottom of our list of priorities until we have more evidence of his love." Most of us would have given up on these people, but God continues to pursue his plan to bless the whole world through this stubborn people.

8. Getting back to David Wilkerson's theme of God crying, let me quote him further, "Do you think it makes God sound too human and too vulnerable to say that He cries? Then ask yourself, how could a God of love not cry when His own people doubt His very nature? How could He not be grieved when His own children act as though He has forsaken them and left them to their own devices? Jesus Christ

was God in the flesh, and according to the book of John He wept when those closest to Him doubted His love and concern. That was God incarnate at the tomb of Lazarus, crying over friends who would not take Him at His word. Crying because their unbelief caused them unnecessary grief and sorrow. Crying because they failed to recognize who He was and rest in His promises.Time and time again Christ's dearest associates on this earth doubted His love for them." Wilkerson does not mention it, but what of Jesus weeping over Jerusalem because he, like a mother hen, would have sheltered them under his wings, but they would not respond to his love, and judgment had to fall on them in 70 A. D. wiping them out, when they had the chance to be under his protecting care. Yes, God does cry when his love is rejected.

8B. Love rejected is painful for everyone, God included. Corrie Ten Boom tells of her dream of being married to a young man named Karel. His parents wanted him to marry a better class, however, and so one day she answered the door, and there stood her dream man with another woman by his side. He said, "Corrie, I want you to meet my fiancee!" Her dream shattered, and with it her broken heart. Do you think God feels any less pain when his people he loved so much go after false idols, and give their devotion to gods who do nothing for them but turn them away from the only God who really loves them? The Gnostics heretics taught that God could not suffer pain. Marcian, the famous heretic of the second century declared God was free of all affection and feeling. For centuries Christian theologians fell for this error, and thought of God more like a machine than a person. Fortunately, modern scholars and Bible reading people have listened to God's Word, and have concluded that God does indeed have all the feelings of a real person.

8C. Jamison, "In painful contrast to the tearful tenderness of God’s love stands their insolent challenge. The root of their sin was insensibility to God’s love, and to their own wickedness. Having had prosperity taken from them, they imply they have no tokens of God’s love; they look at what God had taken, not at what God had left. God’s love is often least acknowledged where it is most manifested. We must not infer God does not love us because He afflicts us. Men, instead of referring their sufferings to their proper cause, their own sin, impiously accuse God of indifference to their welfare [Moore]. Thus Mal_1:1-4 form a fit introduction to the whole prophecy.

8D. Ray Stedman, "Though the Temple was now completed and the walls of Jerusalem were rebuilt, still the people were not enjoying the promised period of blessing and prosperity which Haggai and Zechariah had predicted. As a consequence, their reply to the Lord's vow of love was: "How have you loved us?" The structure of the book of Malachi is here revealed, for again and again God declares His expectation of love from them in return for His love of them, and seven times the people reply, in effect: "How have we fallen short? We do not see any failure on our part." Here is a callous people who have become so indifferent and unresponsive to God that, in perfect sincerity, they can reply, "What do you mean--why do you say such things to us? We do not see any evidence of love on your

part.....here is a callous people who have become so indifferent and so unresponsive to God that in perfect sincerity they can say, "We don't see this. What do you mean? Why do you say these things to us?" Throughout the book, this is the theme."

9. Spurgeon wrote, "Man by nature is a lump of ingratitude. He is often ungrateful even to his earthly friend; and he is invariably ungrateful to his best friend above, until the grace of God has changed his heart. Leave him alone, and though he may be loaded with mercy, yet he will never bless the hand that gives him the favour. Should he even be allowed to survive so long as a hundred years, unless the Holy Spirit shall deal with him, he will not once remember his God in grateful thankfulness; but he will go on, from the beginning to the end of the century, always receiving, but never rendering back to the Lord anything like gratitude. We often say that ingratitude is one of the worst of sins, and we feel it so when it concerns ourselves; but we quite forget that it must be worse toward God than it is toward us; for, after all, whatever we may do for others, we are only like step-fathers to the blessings we bestow, for every good gift comes directly from the Father of lights, even from God himself. We may be the channel conveying comfort to others, but the blessing itself comes from him. Shameful, then, is it that all good should come from God and yet that man should be ungrateful to him who is the great source of it all. The charge of ingratitude can be made against us all as we are by nature; it is not merely of some base, mean, groveling spirits that we are now speaking, but of mankind as a whole, looking at it on a broad scale.

9B. Spurgeon goes on, "The Lord says here by his servant Malachi, "I have loved you, saith the Lord. Yet ye say, Wherein hast thou loved us?" And in the prophecy of Isaiah he says, "I have nourished and brought up children, and they have rebelled against me." Our ingratitude evidently grieves God's heart,-speaking after the manner of men. He cannot bear that we should forget his love; he presses it upon us as a great fact that he has loved us, and he seems astonished that we should in our ingratitude ask the shameful question, "Wherein hast thou loved us?"

9C. Spurgeon continues, "A child has willfully disobeyed. For this offense he has been chastised, and confined to his own room. He is very sullen and obstinate, and his father reasons with him, and tells him with tears that he is greatly grieved with him, and feels wounded by the ingratitude which he receives after all his love. The boy angrily replies that he does not believe in his father's love: if he loved him, why did he whip him, and send him to bed? This would be a very rebellious speech; but it would be pitched in the same key as our text. It would also set forth the spirit which is often seen in Christians when they measure the Lord's love by their temporal circumstances, and ask in rebellion whether their poverty, their pains, and their persecutions are fit fruits of divine favor. The Lord knows how foolish we are apt to be when our soul is vexed with bitter anguish, and therefore he does not destroy us for our presumption, but he patiently reasons with us that he may bring us to a better mind.

What is more tender than a mother's loveTo the sweet infant fondling in her arms?What arguments need her compassion moveTo hear its cries, and help it in its harms?,ow, if the tenderest mother were possessedOf all the love within her single breastOf all the mothers since the world began,'Tis nothing to the love of God to man.— John Byrom

10. Pastor Don Horban has a powerful message for all of us as he writes, "Those responding words of the people have to be some of the most ridiculous and perverse words ever penned - "Where have you shown your love to us?" These are people who, without raising a sword, have been delivered from the strongest empire of the known world - Babylon. They've been brought back into their home land by their enemies. They've been given all the funds and supplies they needed to rebuild their own city - and to re-establish their temple and worship to their own God. These very people are now saying, "Where have you shown your love to us?" How does that happen to a people?

These people go to the temple every day - they offer their sacrifices. They don't even sense the wonder of the unbelievable fact that their God offers pardon and cleansing for their sins. They're going to say later on in this book that their participation in temple worship is a BORE to them (1:13)! There will be many moral and spiritual failures specifically dealt with in this book. But the first subject the LORD challenges them on is this issue of their awareness of His love for them. ,ot THEIR love for HIM, but HIS love for THEM!

The ,ew Testament says we are to "keep ourselves in the love of God" (Jude 21).It's interesting to read this instruction from the Apostle with the book of Malachi in mind. The apostle is writing on the subject of perseverance. ,ot starting out in God's love but keeping going in it. There is a KEEPI,G involved in my walk with the Lord. And it's something I must do myself - "Keep YOURSELVES in the love of God." Of all the graces of the heart, LOVE must be most kept and protected. It is hardest to protect over long periods of time. Something that was cherished when it was new and fresh can be ignored or hated after a long familiarity with it. Galatians 5:6 - "For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has any value. The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love." Faith can't function when love dies. Faith needs the love of God for its fuel. ,o wonder Malachi writes with broken heart about the spiritual failure of the people and priests. Sacrifices can't keep faith alive. The Temple can't keep faith alive. They didn't keep themselves in the love of God."

11. Calvin, "He does not indeed speak here of God’s love generally, such as he shows to the whole human race; but he condemns the Jews, inasmuch as having been freely adopted by God as his holy and peculiar people, they yet forgot this

honor, and despised the Giver, and regarded what he taught them as nothing. When therefore God says that he loved the Jews, we see that his object was to convict them of ingratitude for having despised the singular favor bestowed on them alone, rather than to press that authority which he possesses over all mankind in common. God then might have thus addressed them, “I have created you, and have been to you a kind Father; by my favor does the sun shine on you daily, and the earth produces its fruit; in a word, I hold you bound to me by innumerable benefits.” God might have thus spoken to them; but as I have said, his object was to bring forward the gratuitous adoption with which he had favored the seed of Abraham; for it was a less endurable impiety, that they had despised so incomparable a favor; inasmuch as God had preferred them to all other nations, not on the ground of merit or of any worthiness, but because it had so pleased him. This then is the reason why the Prophet begins by saying, that the Jews had been loved by God: for they had made the worst return for this gratuitous favor, when they despised his doctrine."

They are skeptical and ask how God has loved them, and God says he has shown his love by choosing them as descendants of Jacob over the descendants of Esau. He rejected them and chose you. You are the chosen ones, and not the rejected ones, and that should make you realize that I love you. Jacob and Esau were twins, both born as grandchildren to Abraham, but you have been chosen to be my special people. In comparison to you, those from the seed of Esau are hated and under continual judgment, but you are favored by continual grace even though you are no better than they are. It is not merit and worthiness that makes you chosen, but the pure grace and love of God. They should be filled with gratitude, for they no more deserved to be chosen than Esau and his people. Instead they were indifferent to the wonder of God's love and grace."

12. Deuteronomy 7:7-8 - "The LORD did not set his affection on you and choose you because you were more numerous than other peoples, for you were the fewest of all peoples. {8} But it was because the LORD loved you and kept the oath he swore to your forefathers that he brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the land of slavery, from the power of Pharaoh king of Egypt." It was only God's promise to keep his word that kept him loving this people who were so unloving in return. They did not deserve all the blessings they had received, and God would have given even more, but they were so self centered just like those believers James wrote about in James 4:3 - "When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures."

13. An unknown author wrote on that text of James, "What is really wrong in this person's prayer life? I don't imagine anybody kneeling before the Lord and saying, "Boy, Jesus, all I ever want is gobs and gobs of material goods. And the only person I care about is me. Phooey on the needy, the lost, and phooey on any kind of prayer for spiritual growth. Just gi'me, gi'me. gi'me." ,obody talks like that to God. The process is much more subtle than that. James says it has to do with the "motives" of

the heart. This person has come to think wrongly about the goodness of God - the love of God." This is what is going on in God's people that Malachi is writing about. They want God to prove his love, and Gill wrote, "..an instance of his love is demanded, which is very surprising, when they had so many; and shows great stupidity and unthankfulness." Esau had every right and more as the elder brother to be chosen, but I chose you, and still you have the audacity to doubt my love. They say love is blind, but nothing is more blind than lack of love, and we see it so clearly in God's people in this book.

14. "We do not know why God chose to love Jacob. But we do know that none of us deserves God's love. Why does He love us so much that He sent His own Son to die for our sins? We can't explain it. All we can do is respond in gratitude to God's amazing grace and love." —AL —Albert Lee

Died He for me, who caused His pain?

For me, who Him to death pursued?

Amazing love! How can it be

That Thou, my God, shouldst die for me? —Wesley

3. but Esau I have hated, and I have turned his mountains into a wasteland and left his inheritance to the desert jackals."

1. People have a lot of problems with this verse, but they are problems that they have by misunderstanding what it means. God did not hate Esau as a person, for he blest him with a large family, and a great piece of land, and as far as we know a great life. It was his people as they developed and became idolaters that God hated, and he also hated the descendants of Jabob who became idolaters. The difference is that God needed a remnant who would bring his Son into the world to fulfill his plan of salvation, and he chose to do so through Jacobs people and not through the people of Esau. ,either of them were worthy, but God made his choice and that was his act of love. He went on blessing Jacob's people in a unique way to make sure he had a remnant. He brought them back from exile and continued to bless until the Messiah came into history through them. Esau's people were judged the same, but they were never restored, but perished as a people. The point is, God hated all who were idolaters, both of Esau and Jacob's people. He did not discriminate and ignore the failure's of Jacob's people, but hated them equally, and destroyed them.

1B. You will notice in this book that God clearly hates a lot of things about these descendants of Jacob, for they are treating God with contempt in offering sacrifices

of lame and wounded animals that are worthy of being cast out as worthless. A number of their sins are dealt with, and God hates all of it. There is no attempt to make it seem like God's love for Jacob and his people eliminated his hatred for all of their sins. On the other hand, there is no attempt to say that because the Edomites were judged and destroyed just like the Israelites that it means that no Edomites ever became a part of God's people. Solomon married Edomited, and David when he conquored them gave them the opportunity to live as a defeated people, any of whom wished could have become a part of his kingdom, for he had a number of non-Israelites in his service. The point is, this hatred of God is not universal nor eternal toward the Edomites, and this love is not universal toward the Israelites. There is no picture here of God being unfair and unjust in his hate and love.

1C. "The ,abataeans were the first of God's whips against the Edomites; for the ,abataeans pushed the Edomites back up into a small parcel of land next to Judah. Then John Hyrcanus I, king-heierach of Judea, 134-104 BC, subjugated Edom in fulfillment of the above prophecies, "that Jacob shall lay Esau by the heel." Hyrcanus "permitted the Idumeans to remain in their country as free men if they would circumcise their genitals and observe Jewish law." The point of this bit of history is that God did not hate every individual of the line of Esau, for many could have become a part of the Israelites at this point, for Jews and other people were constantly intermarrying. It was the people as a whole who were judged perpetually, and destroyed as a nation.

2. Clarke interprets this as "I have shown him less love," and then points out 3 important facts, "Let it be remembered,

1. That there is not a word spoken here concerning the eternal state of either man

2. That what is spoken concerns merely their earthly possessions. And,

3. That it does not concern the two brothers at all, but the posterity of each."

3. Barnes agrees with this, and wrote, “While they were yet in their mother’s womb, before any good or evil deserts of either, God said to their mother Gen_25:23, The older shall serve the younger. The hatred was not a proper and formed hatred (for God could not hate Esau before he sinned) but only a lesser love,” which, in comparison to the great love for Jacob, seemed as if it were not love. “So he says Gen_29:31. The Lord saw that Leah was hated; where Jacob’s neglect of Leah, and lesser love than for Rachel, is called ‘hatred;’ yet Jacob did not literally hate Leah, whom he loved and cared for as his wife.” This greater love was shown in preferring the Jews to the Edomites, giving to the Jews His law, Church, temple, prophets, and subjecting Edom to them; and especially in the recent deliverance “He does not speak directly of predestination, but of pre-election, to temporal goods.” God gave both nations alike over to the Chaldees for the punishment of their sins; but the Jews He brought back, Edom He left unrestored."

4. Mark Copeland, "God is speaking of Jacob and Esau as the representative of

their descendant nations; God did not hate Esau personally, but did hate what Edom as a nation had become."

4B. It is really not necessary to defend God at this point, and try to make his hate of sin less shocking. We as parents hate it when our kids choose to do what is evil. We hate it when they sass back and deliberately do the very things we forbid them to do, and we show our hatred for it by punishing them. God is not being any different than a normal parent, but because we do not use the word hate it sounds too radical to us, but the emotion of hate is a true emotion in all who really love. You do not really love with any great intensity if you do not hate what seeks to destroy your love. If you do not hate the smooth talker who seeks to win the affections of your mate, you do not love your mate enough to help in resisting the temptation. Any love that does not hate what seeks to destroy it is a false love, and of little worth.

4C. Stedman sees God's choice based on the characters of the two brothers and wrote, "If we had known these two men we probably would have loved Esau and hated Jacob, for Jacob was the schemer, the operator, the untrustworthy rascal. Esau was the outdoor man, hearty, open, frank and strong. Of the two he appears naturally to be much the better man; but in effect God says, "I love Jacob, because in his heart is a hunger for deeper things than life affords." Jacob wants something more than what is on the surface. That always draws out the heart of God. Esau was a despiser of his birthright and cared nothing for spiritual matters." This would not then be God's sovereign choice just based on his will, but on the foreknowledge of what these two men would be like." Someone else added, "If you had known these two men, you would probably have loved Esau and hated Jacob. Jacob was the schemer, the big time operator, the supplanter, the usurper, the untrustworthy rascal. Esau was the big outdoor man, hearty, open, frank, strong, boasting in his exploits as a hunter and as a man of the out-of-doors. Of the two, he appears much the better man, but God says, "I loved Jacob because in the heart of Jacob is the hunger after the deeper things of life; Jacob wants something more than what is on the surface." That always draws out the heart of God. And this is characteristic of the nation as well."

4D. Piper said,"I hope you will agree with me this morning that in order to love deeply, there are things you must deeply hate. You could think of examples yourself. To love children deeply you must hate any mistreatment or neglect that destroys them. If you love clear-headed kindness and respect, you have to hate alcoholism and drug addiction. If you love freedom, you have to hate slavery and totalitarianism.....I want you to realize from the very outset that God's hatred is the reflex of his love. The only reason anybody should hate anything is because it replaces or ruins something beautiful and wonderful. Hatred should always stand in the service of love. If you hate anything, it should be because you love something more. So when I tell you that God hates something, I want you to hear that hatred as the echo of his love. He hates what he hates because it replaces or ruins something beautiful." In the light of this you can go and read of how the Edomites from Esau did their best to destroy the Israelites, and God had every reason to hate them for

their desire to destroy the people he chose for his plan of salvation in the world. It was not unreasonable or unfair at all for God to hate these enemies of his chosen ones. If you don't hate people who are trying to kill your children, you do not love them much, if at all.

5. An unknown author put together these Scriptures that make it clear that God did, in fact, hate Esau's people called the Edomites, and their evil brought severe judgment upon them so that they could not recover as did the Israelites after their judgment. He wrote, "People generally have a hard time with the fact that God says that He hated Esau." It is just a fact of recorded history that he did, as these texts show. Ps. 11:4-5 The LORD is in His holy temple; the LORDS throne is in heaven; His eyes behold, His eyelids test the sons of men. The LORD tests the righteous and the wicked, and the one who loves violence His soul hates." This is not limite to Esau, but his people felt the full brunt of it. "God hates those who love violence. And the descendants of Esau, who was also called Edom, loved violence. The Edomites violently opposed the Israelites. God prophesied to the Edomites through Obadiah 10 "Because of violence to your brother Jacob, you will be covered with shame, and you will be cut off forever." "So the Lord isn't talking about one man here, but the entire nation of his descendants. The Israelites, whom God had loved and chosen, would survive for thousands of more years. But the Edomites would not survive as a nation. Obad. 18 "Then the house of Jacob will be a fire and the house of Joseph a flame; But the house of Esau will be as stubble. And they will set them on fire and consume them, So that there will be no survivor of the house of Esau," For the LORD has spoken." The bottom line is, Edom became a God forsaken place fit only for wild beasts because of their wickedness, and God's judgment on it.

6. John Piper wrote, ",otice four aspects to God's hate of Esau. First, it means that God opposes their prosperity and brings their land under judgment. "I have laid waste his hill country and left his heritage to jackals of the desert." Second, it means that God will continue to oppose them when they resist his judgment. His judgment will not suffer resistance. Verse 4: "If Edom says, We are shattered but we will rebuild the ruins, the Lord of hosts says, They may build, but I will tear down."Third, God's hate for Esau means that they will by and large as a nation be given up to wickedness. Verse 4b: ". . . till they are called the wicked country. . ." This is the most devastating of the judgments and the one that makes all the others just. God is not bringing judgments on an innocent people. He is just in all his dealings. When he passed over Esau and chose Jacob there was no decree that an innocent Esau would be judged. Rather what God decreed was to pass Esau by, to withhold his electing love and to give him up to wickedness. ,ow there is great mystery here, and I do not claim to solve all the problems that our little minds can think up. There is much we are not yet ready to know. We see through a glass darkly. But this much we are surely to believe: God did not choose the descendants of Esau; rather he passed over them and withheld his electing love; as a result Esau gave rein to wickedness and deserved the indignation of God. Which leads to the fourth aspect of God's hate. Fourth, at the end of verse 4 it means that the Lord is angry, or indignant with them forever."

7. The Edomites joined in on every effort to bring destrution to the people of God. The following quotes reveal again how God's hate for them was justified.

"Edomites allied themselves with ,ebuchadnezzar when he destroyed Jerusalem in 586 BC, according to Psalm 137:7, which says, "Remember, O Lord, what the Edomites did on the day Jerusalem fell. 'Tear it down,' they cried, 'tear it down to its foundations! God's final whip against the Edomites was Rome. For the Romans used 20,000 of the Idumeans as allies in the siege of Jerusalem, 70AD. But afterwards, the Romans annihilated the Idumeans, stating simply that they were a lawless and despicable race." These Idumeans were also descendants of Esau.

8. Another author wrote, "When studying the Bible, it is critically important to always study the context of a particular Bible verse or passage. In these instances, the Prophet Malachi and the Apostle Paul are using the name “Esau” to refer to the Edomites, who were the descendants of Esau. Isaac and Rebekah had two sons, Esau and Jacob. God chose Jacob (whom He later renamed Israel) to be the father of His chosen people, the Israelites. God rejected Esau (who was also called Edom), and did not choose him to be the father of His chosen people. Esau’s and his descendants, the Edomites, were in many ways blessed by God (Genesis 33:9; Genesis chapter 36).

So, considering the context, God loving Jacob and hating Esau has nothing to do with the human emotions of love and hate. It has everything to do with God choosing one man and his descendants and rejecting another man and his descendants. God choose Abraham out of all the men in the world. The Bible very well could say, “Abraham I loved, and every other man I hated.” God choose Abraham’s son Isaac instead of Abraham’s son Ishmael. The Bible very well could say, “Isaac I loved, and Ishmael I hated.” Romans chapter 9 makes it abundantly clear that loving Jacob and hating Esau was entirely related to which of them God chose. Hundreds of years after Jacob and Esau had died, the Israelites and Edomites became bitter enemies. The Edomites often aided Israel’s enemies in attacks on Israel. Esau’s descendants brought God’s curse upon themselves."

4. Edom may say, "Though we have been crushed, we will rebuild the ruins." But this is what the LORD Almighty says: "They may build, but I will demolish. They will be called the Wicked Land, a people always under the wrath of the LORD.

1. God's wrath fell on Israel as well, and they suffered great judgment, but they

were led back to the land of promise and were led to rebuild and restore the Temple, and again have the full favor of God upon them. This was not the case with the Edomites who were descended from Esau, for they met with destruction and could not rebuild. This is evidence of God's providence favoring the Jews, but as obvious as it was, they did not see their special position with God, and they were not grateful. God gave them historical reasons to support his special love for them, but they could not see it. Calvin said, "God might indeed have been equally angry with the Jews as with the Edomites, but when God became pacified towards the Jews, while he continued inexorable to the posterity of Esau, the difference between the two people was hence quite manifest."

2. We see here that history is a good gage of who is favored by God. If his providence is such that a country and people are gloriously filled with blessings, that is evidence of his favor. How grateful then should we be who dwell in America? We have been so favored by God's providence that we have had for decades the highest level of blessedness of any people. Our blessings are so abundant that the rest of the world dreams of having what we have. Are we the most grateful to God of any people in the world because of it, or are we just like the Jews who took their blessings for granted,and had no appreciation to God for his love and favor? Calvin rightly says of all who have been chosen by God to be his children through faith in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, "Except then we love and reverence him as our Father, and except we fear him as our Lord, there is found in us at this day an ingratitude no less base than in that ancient people."

3. Edom in pride said they don't need God's blessing, for they can go it on their own and rebuild and be as strong as ever. When the going gets tough the tough get going would be a motto they would gladly receive. God, however, was not done with his judgment, and if they were successful in rebuilding it would only be to have it destroyed again. They were under his perpectual judgment, and that is what he is trying to get the Israelites to see. That is where they should be as well, but God has let them rebuild, and God wants them to prosper and move ahead into a history filled with potential of great blessings. They just can't see the blessing of being treated so differently from the Edomites. They do not see the love of God in his providence in their lives compared to the lack of it in the lives of the Edomites. Wake up people! They are under the perpetual wrath of God, and you are a free people with all the potential in the world for greatness again.

4. The Edomites did not get it either, for they were under God's wrath, and they were not chosen for a second chance. They thought they could do it on their own without God's help. Someone wrote, "We have the arrogance to think that we can choose our own destiny, we can go our own direction, and we have to give no attention and no allegiance and no direction to God at all. But, my friend, that is not so. That is a lie that the devil had taught us and has deluded us into thinking that we are capable of pulling ourselves up by our own bootstraps when in fact without God we don’t even have bootstraps. He says, “You think you are going to build, but I will throw down.” He says, “You think you are going to become great,

but I will show you greatness is temporary. You will think you are going to be mighty, but I will show you how weak your mightiness truly, truly is.”

5. Barnes, "Henceforth, it should be known no more by its own name; but as “the border of wickedness,” where wickedness formerly dwelt, and, hence, the judgment of God and desolation from Him came upon it, “an accursed land." The Edomites ceased to exist as a people and a nation. God would not let them survive as he did the Jews, and that should have been a reason to be loyal to God forever, but it was not. People forgot the providence of God, and let gratitude forsake them.

6. Henry draws out the comparison of the judgment of Israel and the Edomites. He wrote, "Jacob's cities are laid waste, but they are rebuilt; Edom's are laid waste, and never rebuilt. The sufferings of the righteous will have an end and will end well; all their grievances will be redressed, and their sorrow turned into joy; but the sufferings of the wicked will be endless and remediless, as Edom's desolations, Mal_1:4. Observe here, [1.] The vain hopes of the Edomites, that they shall have their ruins repaired as well as Israel, though they had no promise to build their hope upon. They say, “It is true, we are impoverished; it is the common chance, and there is no remedy; but we will return and build the desolate places; we are resolved we will” (not so much as asking God leave); “we will whether he will or no; nay, we will do it in defiance of God's curse, and that sentence pronounced upon Edom (Isa_34:10), From generation to generation it shall lie waste.” They build presumptuously, as Hiel built Jericho in direct contradiction to the word of God (1Ki_16:34), and it shall speed accordingly. ,ote, It is common for those whose hearts are unhumbled under humbling providences to think to make their part good against God himself, and to build, and plant, and flourish again as much as ever, though God has said that they shall be impoverished. But see, [2.] The dashing of these hopes and the disappointment of them: They say, We will build; but what says the Lord of hosts? For we are sure his word shall stand, and not theirs; and he says, First, Their attempts shall be baffled: They shall build, but I will throw down. ,ote, Those that walk contrary to God will find that he will walk contrary to them; for who ever hardened his heart against God and prospered? When the Jews had rejected Christ and his gospel they became Edomites, and this word was fulfilled in them; for when, in the time of the emperor Adrian, they attempted to rebuild Jerusalem, God by earthquakes and eruptions of fire threw down what they built, so that they were forced to quit the enterprise. Secondly, They shall be looked upon by all as abandoned to utter ruin. All that see them shall call them the border of wickedness, a sinful nation, incurably so, and therefore the people against whom the Lord has

indignation for ever. Since their wickedness is such as will never be reformed, their desolations shall be such as are never to be repaired. Against Israel God was a little

displeased (Zec_1:15), but against Edom he has indignation, and will have for ever, for they are the people of his curse, Isa_34:5."

5. You will see it with your own eyes and say, `Great is the LORD--even beyond the borders of Israel!'

1. Seeing is believing, and God says to these blind people that they will eventually get the picture of God's providence in history. They will see that Esau and other nations who were taken into captivity, just the same as them, were not able to return and rebuild as they were able to do by God's grace. When they see this reality it will dawn on them that God is not just great in the Promised Land, as if he was a God limited to this particular space and people. He is the Lord of all, and far beyond the borders of this land he is the King of kings, and Lord of lords. They had too limited a view of God, but the day will come when they grasp the truth that he is the God over all the world and the universe. At this point their God is too small, but the time will come when they see their God enlarged, and they will praise him as he deserves to be praised.

2. Ray Boltz \ Great Is The Lord

Great is the LordHe is holy and just;By His power we trust in His love.Great is the Lord,He is faithful and true;By His mercy He proves He is love.

Great is the Lord and worthy of glory!Great is the Lord and worthy of praise.Great is the Lord; now lift up your voice,,ow lift up your voice:Great is the Lord!Great is the Lord!

Great are You, Lord, and worthy of glory!Great are You, Lord, and worthy of praise.Great are You, Lord; I lift up my voice,I lift up my voice:Great are You, Lord!Great are You, Lord!

Great is the Lord and worthy of glory!Great is the Lord and worthy of praise.Great is the Lord; now lift up your voice,,ow lift up your voice:

Great is the Lord!Great is the Lord!

6. "A son honors his father, and a servant his master. If I am a father, where is the honor due me? If I am a master, where is the respect due me?" says the LORD Almighty. "It is you, O priests, who show contempt for my name. "But you ask, `How have we shown contempt for your name?'

1. Is it ever right to compain? Should we have a right to complain that people that owe us respect do not show it?" Do we have a right to complain when people who have a responsibility do not do the job they are supposed to do? Do we have a right to complain when merchandise that we purchase does not work, or is damaged? Stores allow you to bring it back, and so they have complaint departments where they listen to your complaint and make it right. So complaining about things that are not right, and injustices are valid. Paul in Acts 16 complained about the injustice that was done to him in putting him in prison for no just cause. He demanded the officials come an apologize to him for the wrong. The point is, it is valid to make complaints in many situations, and God himself puts his stamp of approval on it, for he has a load of complaints about his people's honor and respect for himself. You would assume that the Creator and Lord of all reality would have the highest honor and respect from those who believe in him, but this does not seem to be the case at all times, for it is greatly lacking in his own people at this time.

2. Sometimes fathers feel like they get no respect, and that they are trated like Rodney Dangerfield who is always complaining of getting no respect. God knows how that feels, for he has kids that are just as lacking in respect for him. They take and take and take, but when it comes to giving they have hung up on God. You would think that people who are chosen out of all the world to be his people would have some sense of gratitude, and that they would honor the God who chose them, but it does not always work that way with sinful human beings. Those who deserve the greatest respect are often the ones most neglected. If you are looking for a fair world, you are on the wrong planet, for in a fallen world, and that is the only one we have, you will look in vain for all things to be as they should be. God is basically begging for their respect. It hurts God not to be respected by his children, and it hurts the children as well, for it makes them ungrateful brats.

3. What a paradox we are dealing with in this book. God is absolutely sovereign in who he chooses to bless and use as the people he will bring the Messiah into the world through, yet he will not use his sovereign power to force his people to love, honor and respect him for choosing them. God reveals his sovereignty, and his dependance upon the free choices of men all in the same few verses. Calvinists can make a big issue about God's sovereign choice, and Arminians can make a big issue about the free choices of his people, but wiser than either are those who make a big issue about how both are equally true and valid in a Biblical theology. To deny either one is to have a crippled theology that is blind to the obvious paradox that both the sovereign choices of God, and the personal choices of people run all through the Word of God.

4. Calvin, "God expostulates here with a perverse and an ungrateful people, because they doubly deprived him of his right; for he was neither loved nor feared, though he had a just claim to the name and honor of a master as well as that of a father. As then the Jews paid him no reverence, he complains that he was defrauded of his right as a father; and as they entertained no fear for him, he condemns them for not acknowledging, him as their Lord and Master, by submitting to his authority. But before he comes to this, he shows that he was both their Lord and Father; and he declares that he was especially their Father, because he loved them. We now then understand the Prophet’s intention; for God designed to show here how debased the Jews were, as they acknowledged him neither as their Father nor as their Lord; they neither reverenced him as their Lord, nor regarded him as their Father. But he brings forward, as I have already said, his benefits, by which he proves that he deserved the honor due to a father and to a master."

5. Religeous leaders can be the worst people in showing reverance for God and his will. We see it here in the priests that are condemned, and elsewhere in a number of places. Ezekiel 22:26 says, "Her priests have violated my law, and have profaned mine holy things: they have put no difference between the holy and profane, neither have they shewed [difference] between the unclean and the clean, and have hid theireyes from my sabbaths, and I am profaned among them." It has been a common reality in the history of Israel that the religious leaders lose all respect for God, and this leads to the nation losing it as well. It was the religious leader who had no respect for Christ, and they killed him as a common criminal who was, in fact, their Lord and Redeemer.

6. Just as God had every valid reason to hate the evils of Esau and his people, so he has every reason to hate the disrespect of the people of Israel. Disrespect of God is the first step into the pit of rebellion against the will of God. When you cease to honor God and glorify his name, you cease to honor his Word, and that leads to all kinds of compromise and sinful behavior. That is why God is so concerned that He is honored and respected. His ego does not demand it, but he knows that when men cease to have it, they are on the downward path to their own destruction.

7. I found this interesting paragraph called God’s Complaint. The author is not a Christian as far as I know. He is a famous yoga authority in India, but it has a message that Christians need to give heed to. It sounds very mystical, and the language is very different, but when you read it in light of the Biblical teaching that we are the temple of the Spirit, and that Christ and the Father do indwell us, and that God is light, and Christ is the light of the world, it does make a lot of sense. It goes too far in saying that we disown God, and try to forget him, but it does sound like a valid complaint of God that fits his complaints about his people.

"I reside in them. I am in the same house which I made, and that is the man-body. But they dethrone Me from the body and put Me where? In churches, mosques, gurdwaras, temples, synagogues etc. These are models, and they put light there. Instead of seeing Me, My Light, they see the symbols of light. I am the Light within them. But they just light candles outside.

People dethrone Me. They do not come where I live. They turn Me out into the models which they make with mud and mortar. I am long forgotten by everybody.

I reside in you. I am Light. Take heed that the Light within you is not darkened. I am Light. I am the Sound Principle – Music of the Spheres. But they light candles and ring bells. They try to disown Me.

They make models and direct people to them. Excuse me, but the Truth remains: I am in your temple, residing within you. I reside nowhere else. Why do you forget me?

There is a valuable jewel lying within you, just be guided by the Word of the Master and you will get it. I am a hidden treasure within you. Why don’t you find Me?

From The Light of Kirpal By Sant Kirpal Singh J

8. We do not have to go outside of Scripture, however, to find God's complaints. P. G. Mathew has this message on the divine complaint. In Isaiah 5:1-4. "I will sing for the one I love a song about his vineyard: My loved one had a vineyard on a fertile hillside. He dug it up and cleared it of stones and planted it with the choicest vines. He built a watchtower in it and cut out a winepress as well. Then he looked for a crop of good grapes, but it yielded only bad fruit. ",ow you dwellers in Jerusalem and men of Judah, judge between me and my vineyard. What more could have been done for my vineyard than I have done for it? When I looked for good grapes, why did it yield only bad?"

8B. Matthew comments, "God made a vineyard on a fertile hillside. Isaiah tells us he dug it up, cleared away stones, and planted the best vines he could find. Then he built a watchtower and cut out a winepress in anticipation of a great harvest. Having done all this work, he then looked for grapes, but the vineyard yielded only bad fruit. In verse 4 God asked, "What more could I have done for my vineyard

than I have done for it? When I looked for good grapes, why did it yield only bad?" In other words, God was saying, "It is not my fault the vineyard yielded only bad fruit; I have done everything. The bad fruit is my people’s fault."

8C. A vineyard with only bad fruit is worthless to its owner. We must consider carefully, then, then the meaning of this parable given in verse 7: "The vineyard of the Lord Almighty is the house of Israel, and the men of Judah are the garden of his delight. And he looked for justice, but saw bloodshed; for righteousness, but heard cries of distress." God is speaking about the church, his own people—those he redeemed from Egypt, those he brought by his mighty power through the wilderness and through the Jordan into the land of Canaan, those among whom he himself dwelt so that he could bless them, protect them, and guide them. God looked for justice, but saw only bloodshed; he looked for righteousness, but heard cries of distress. The fruit God expected of his people was the fruit of obedience to God’s law and living in right relationship with one another. What he got was the bad fruit of unrighteousness." Is it any wonder that the Bible is so full of God's complaints, when he expresses endless love, and gets so little back in loving gratitude and obedience.

8D. What father would not complain when his kids ignore his will and authority, and go off doing the very things that he has commanded them not to do? God has unbelievable patience in even speaking to these people without blasting them into kingdom come. He is their father, and they treat him like an ememy. They should be proud to claim God as their father, for he fathered them in a special way to bring a Savior into the world who would be for all people. Barnes put this series of texts together to show this teaching that God was their father in a unique way. "This they were taught to confess in their psalmody Psa_100:3, “He hath made us, and not we ourselves; we are His people and the sheep of His pasture.” This title God had given them in sight of the Egyptians Exo_4:22, “Israel is My son, My firstborn:” of this Hosea reminded them; Hos_11:1, “When Israel was a child, then I loved him, and called My son out of Egypt;” and Jeremiah reassured them Jer_31:9, “I am a Father to Israel and Ephraim is My firstborn:” this, Isaiah had pleaded to God Isa_63:16, “Doubtless Thou art our Father, though Abraham be ignorant of us, and Israel acknowledge us not. Thou, O Lord, art our Father, our Redeemer, Thy name is from everlasting Isa_64:8. And now, O Lord, Thou art our Father; we the clay, and Thou our potter; and we all, the work of Thy hands.” God had impressed this His relation of Father, in Moses’ prophetic warning; Deu_32:6, “Do ye thus requite the Lord, O foolish people and unwise? Is not He thy Father that hath bought thee? hath He not made thee and established thee?” “God is the Father of the faithful:"

8E. Barnes quotes someone else who wrote, “God requireth to be feared as a Lord, honored as a Father, loved as a Husband. Which is chiefest of these? Love. Without this, fear has torment, honor has no grace. Fear, when not enfreed by love, is servile. Honor, which cometh not from love, is not honor, but adulation. Honor and glory belong to God Alone; but neither of them will God accept, unless seasoned with the honey of love.” The Jews at this stage of life had none of the requirements, for they

lacked love, honor, and respect. God is now going to come down on the priests who are largely responsible for this disaster in Israel.

9. God focuses on the priests as those who show most contempt for his name, and of course they don't get his point, and they ask, "How have we shown contempt for your name?" As far as they are concerned they are innocent, and not guilty as charged. Here we have another case of the blind leading the blind. They have no idea how offensive they are to God. When judgment comes on such people it is all a mystery, for they don't have a clue about how deserving they are of judgment. They have no respect for God at all.

9B. G. Campbell Morgan wrote, "The God of their fathers is not their God. The God of spiritual communion with His people, who walked and talked with the patriarchs, is not their God. The god of Israel in the days of Malachi, the god whom they had invented, and were trying to appease and Avorship, was the god of trivialities, of mechanical observ- ances, the god who asks for a temple with a set number of stones and corners, the altar of such a shape, and so many sacrifices and prayers, without any reference to character. When the prophet came to these people, he came to a people who were feeling thoroughly satisfied with their religious observances, and were prepared to say, " Wherein have we done this, or failed to do that ?"

9C. Morgan goes on to show the depths of their darkness by all the complaints of God against their blindness. He wrote, "Against this people — formal and self-satis- fied — God, by the mouth of His messenger, uttered seven complaints which may thus be summarized : Profanity, Sacrilege, Greed, Weariness in service. Honoring of vice — or Treason against the covenant of Heaven , Robbery from God, and Blasphemy against Him. To these complaints they responded with the question " Wherein ? " There is a profanity far worse than that of the slum ; a sacrilege far more terrible than the act of breaking into the sacred place and purloining the vessels of the sanctuary ; a greed which is more atrocious than the greed of a man who professes no godliness, but openly worships Mammon ; a weariness in service which even exceeds in wickedness an entire abstention from service ; a form of treason by the honor- ing of vice, which is more awful than outward and open plotting — however diabolic it may be — to dethrone God ; a kind of robbery which is more terrible than the actual abstraction of coins from the treasury of the Most High ; a kind of blasphemy that in comparison makes the revolting blasphemy of the streets seem almost insignificant and obtuse."

10. Barnes, "The contempt of God came especially from those bound most to honor him. priests, as consecrated to God, belonged especially to God . “Malachi begins his prophecy and correction by the correction of the priests; because the reformation of the state and of the laity hangs upon the reformation of the clergy and the priest, for Hos_4:9, “as is the priest, such also is the people?” He turns, with a suddenness which must have been startling to them, to them as the center of the offending."

11. The Pastor of Hampton Road Baptist tells of his experience with a man who had more respect for snakes than God's priests had for God. He wrote, "I visited with a man one time that was bitten by a king cobra. He was a snake handler. He was in the hospital and his hand was all wrapped up. He showed me part of it, more than I wanted to see of it. Where the cobra bit him, his hand was literally rotting away. He began to tell me about it. So I said, “Are you going to get rid of the cobra?” And he said, “Oh no.” I said, “Are you going to quit handling the cobra?” He said, “Oh, no”. I thought if it had been my snake it would have been a dead snake. Then he surprised me by saying, “It wasn’t the cobra’s fault.” I said, “What do you mean?” He said, “As long as I handle the snake like I was supposed to, it was okay. But I made a mistake in the way I handled him. I didn’t treat the snake with the respect I was supposed to treat him with and the snake did what is natural for snakes to do." He respected the power of the snake to hurt him, but the priest had no respect for the God who could destroy them, and so they treated everything in the temple with careless indifference to the holiness of God. It was disgraceful beyond our comprehension how men could be so blind to their folly, and their danger of being utterly destroyed by the wrath of God. I like the way Gary Henry said it, "Malachi’s people were not only “out of touch with the living God,” they were out of touch with the fact that they were out of touch! They simply did not (or would not) see how they were dishonoring God."

12. John Piper in making this matter of respect for God a vital issue in all of our lives, made this statement, "... the less we emphasize the need for children to reverence their human fathers, the less God's fatherhood will trigger our reverence; and the less God's fatherhood wakens our reverence and honor, the less we will make that part of the human ideal of fatherhood."Then he goes on to share this insight, "The first thing Malachi does to help us feel the Majesty of our Father in this text is to use a special name for him again and again. Eight times in these nine verses (24 times in the whole book) God is called "the LORD of hosts."

Verse 6, "And if I am a master, where is my fear? says the LORD of hosts."Verse 8, "Will he be pleased with you or show you favor? says the LORD of hosts."Verse 9, "Will he show favor to any of you? says the LORD of hosts."Verse 10, "I have no pleasure in you, says the LORD of hosts."Verse 11, "My name is great among the nations, says the LORD of hosts."Verse 13, "`What a weariness this is,' you say, and you sniff at it, says the LORD of hosts."Verse 13, "Shall I accept that from your hand? says the LORD of hosts."Verse 14, "I am a great King, says the LORD of hosts."

"Hosts" means great numbers of armies or angels or stars. So what Malachi wants us to see and feel is that our Father in heaven has infinite authority in the universe. He can wield any and all armies on the earth to accomplish his purposes among the nations whether they know it or not. He has myriads of unstoppable angels who do his bidding flawlessly and never fail in their errands. And he has appointed every star in the universe its position. He holds them in place -- all trillion trillion of them -- and calls them all by name." He adds, "So the origin of careless worship is a

failure to see and feel the greatness of God."

13. What Piper is saying is that we lack respect for God by losing our awareness of who he is. The priest certainly had lost their awareness of God's presence and power, for they carried on their worship duties with complete indifference to his majesty and his all knowing mind. They could not know that God knew all they were doing and still go ahead and offer him blind, crippled and diseased animals. It was contemptable enough that they did it in their ignorance, but to do this kind of thing in full awareness of who God is, is the ultimate in folly. It would be like knowing the unmarked car behind you was a patrol car, and then deliberatel run a red light. That is so stupid it is hard to conceive of anyone doing it, but how much worse to know God is watching and offer him a contemptable offering? The paradox here is that the religion of these priests was irreligious. They had an antireligious faith, for they believed that God was basically indifferent to them and their worship. They had no confidence that he loved them or cared anything about their religious practices. It was all a sham, and so they decided to at least make some money at it. They were hypocrites of the highest order as Godless God servers. This is the depth to which man can fall when he does not know who God really is. Once you lose the knowledge of God, all human folly and evil are permissable and acceptable.

14. Gary Henry is an expert in puting together meaningful lists, and here is his list of the shocking sins of the priests:1. Refusing to reverence the Lord and despising His name (Mal. 1:6).2. Offering the blind, lame, sick, etc. as sacrifices (Mal. 1:7,8).3. Treating the altar as contemptible (Mal. 1:7,12).4. Treating the Lord’s service as a wearisome drudgery (Mal. 1:13).5. Refusing to take the Lord’s warning to heart (Mal. 2:1,2).6. Corrupting the priestly covenant of Levi (Mal. 2:4,5,8).7. Departing from the way of the Lord (Mal. 2:8,9).8. Causing the people to stumble at the law (Mal. 2:8).9. Showing partiality in the priestly functions (Mal. 2:9).

15. Gary Henry has put together another list of texts that deal with the reverence that is due to the Lord Almighty.

A. In Malachi, several different expressions describe the people’s failure to reverence God.1. God asked “Where is My honor?...Where is My reverence?” (Mal. 1:6).2. He charged Israel with having “despised My name” (Mal. 1:6).3. He said, “My name shall be great among the nations...But you profane it” (Mal. 1:11,12). 4. He rebuked the priests for having refused to “give glory to My name” (Mal. 2:2).5. He promised that those who “do not fear Me” (Mal. 3:5) would be punished.6. On the other hand, the righteous remnant who would be blessed by the Lord are “those who feared the Lord” (Mal. 3:16) — God said they were those “who fear

My name” (Mal. 4:2).B. To reverence God is to “hallow” Him, to treat Him as holy.C. The use of the expression “fear of the Lord” in Proverbs teaches much about reverence. Cf. Prov. 1:7,29;2:5; 8:13; 9:10; 10:27; 14:26,27; 15:16,33; 16:6; 19:23; 22:4; 23:17.D. The elements that make up reverence may be considered in various ways.1. Reverence may be thought of as “radical respect.”2. Reverence = respect + love.3. Irreverence is actually a refusal to acknowledge God’s love! Cf. Mal. 1:2.4. As indicated by the title of John Benton’s commentary on Malachi, irreverence is “losing touch with the living God.”

7. "You place defiled food on my altar. "But you ask, `How have we defiled you?' "By saying that the LORD's table is contemptible.

1. This is a serious charge of corruption of God's holiness by their indifference to what is clean and pure. They cast all of God's specific instructions aside and did what they felt like doing. The will of God as revealed to them in his Word was no longer their guide to valid worship. They threw God's instruction out the door and put themselves in charge of how things could be done. ,o wonder they had no respect for God, for they had fired him as their Lord and guide. He was no longer the one telling them what to do. They were now telling him what they were going to do. It was pure rebellion, and it is awesome that God did not thrust them back into Babylon again. They were not worthy of him, but extremely worthy of his judgment.

2. Clarke, "The priests, probably to ingratiate themselves with the people, took the refuse beasts, etc., and offered them to God; and thus the sacrificial ordinances were rendered contemptible.

3. Dr. Paul Choo, "The "table of the LORD" refers to the Altar of Sacrifice. It is called the "table" because part of the offerings was food for the priests and their families. The priests were unsatisfied with their portion of the sacrifices and considered their support to be contemptible. The people were unimpressed with the simplicity of the Altar (and the Temple) and considered it to be contemptible compared to Solomon's Temple - and only offered "polluted" animals for sacrifice.

4. Adults are just like children when it comes to admitting faults. ,o child says when caught in a forbidden action, "I confess that I was doing wrong. It was my fault that it happened. I started the fight." The normal reaction is more like, "I didn't do it. I

was pushed. They started it." This is the kind of reaction we see all through the book of Malachi. ,obody is really aware of their own guilt, or they are into the cover up mode. They are saying all the time when God complains and charges them with evil behavior, "We didn't do that. That was not our fault. We are innocent. Somebody else told us to do it." ,ever do we hear anyone say, "You have me there Lord, I confess I blew it, please forgive me."

5. John Maxwell relates in his book , Developing the Leader within you, some research conducted with Prison Inmates. “A psychologist asked various prisoners, “Why are you here?” The answers were very revealing, though expected. There were many of them: “I was framed”. “They ganged up on me.” “It was a case of mistaken identity.” The psychologist wondered, if one could possibly find a larger group of “innocent” people anywhere else but in prison.

Again he tells another story about responsibility. The sales manager of a dog food company asked his sales people how they liked the company’s new advertising campaign. Great the best in the business, the sales team responded. How do you like our new label and the package? Great. The best in the business, the sales team responded. How do you like our sales force? They were the sales force. They had to admit they were good. Okay then, said the manager, So we’ve got the best label, the best package, the best advertising program sold by the best sales force in the business. Tell me why we are in 17th place in the doog food business? There was silence. Finally someone said, It’s those lousy dogs. They won’t eat the stuff!"

6. Barnes, "It was “polluted,” in that it was contrary to the law of God which forbade to sacrifice any animal, “lame or blind” or with “any ill blemish,” as being inconsistent with the typical perfection of the sacrifice. Even the Gentiles were careful about the perfection of their sacrifices. “Blind is the sacrifice of the soul, which is not illumined by the light of Christ. Lame is his sacrifice of prayer, who comes with a double mind to entreat the Lord.” “He offereth one weak, whose heart is not established in the grace of God, nor by the anchor of hope fixed in Christ. These words are also uttered against those who, being rich, offer to the Creator the cheaper and least things, and give small alms."

7. Barnes goes on to show that it was all to common for the priests to become corrupt in defiling the name of their Lord, and that same error is possible in our lives yet today. He wrote, "Though less bold in expression, they are yet like in meaning Eze_13:19. “Will ye pollute Me anymore among My people?” or Eze_20:9, Eze_20:14, Eze_20:22, “that My ,ame should not be polluted before the pagan Eze_43:7. My holy ,ame shall Israel no more defile Eze_39:7, “I will not let them pollute My ,ame anymore.” “Much more in the new law, in which the Sacrifice is Christ Himself our God, whence the Apostle says expressly 1Co_11:27, “Whoso eateth this bread and drinketh this cup of the Lord unworthily, shall be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord.” “For when the sacraments are violated, Himself, whose sacraments they are, is violated.” God speaks of our acts with an unveiled plainness, which we should not dare to use. “As we are said to sanctify God, when we minister to Him in holiness and righteousness, and so, as far as in us lies, show

that He is holy; so we are said to pollute Him, when we conduct ourselves irreverently and viciously before Him, especially in His worship, and thereby, as far as in us lies, show that He is not holy and is to be dishonored."

8. Barnes explains how the priests were thinking. “In that ye say, the table of the Lord is contemptible,” literally “contemptible is it,” , and so any contemptible thing might be offered on it. They said this probably, not in words, but in deeds. Or, if in words, in plausible words. “God doth not require the ornamenting of the altar, but the devotion of the offerers.” “What good is it, if we offer the best? Be what we offer, what it may, it is all to be consumed by fire.” “The pretext at once of avarice and gluttony!” And so they kept the best for themselves. They were poor, on their return from the captivity. Anyhow, the sacrifices were offered. What could it matter to God? And so they dispensed with God’s law."

9. Jamison, "Ye sanction the niggardly and blemished offerings of the people on the altar, to gain favor with them. Darius, and probably his successors, had liberally supplied them with victims for sacrifice, yet they presented none but the worst. A cheap religion, costing little, is rejected by God, and so is worth nothing. It costs more than it is worth, for it is worth nothing, and so proves really dear. God despises not the widow’s mite, but he does despise the miser’s mite [Moore]."

10. Henry, " There cannot be a greater provocation to God than the profanation of his name; for it is holy and reverend. His purity cannot be polluted by us, for he is unspotted, but his name may be profaned; and nothing profanes it more than the misconduct of priests, whose business it is to do honour to it. This is the general charge exhibited against them. To this they plead )ot guilty, and challenge God to prove it upon them, and to make good the charge, which added daring impudence to their daring impiety: You say, Wherein have we despised thy name? (Mal_1:6), and wherein have we polluted thee? Mal_1:7. It is common with proud sinners, when they are reproved, to stand thus upon their own justification. These priests had most horridly profaned sacred things, and yet, like the adulterous woman, they said that they had done no wickedness; they were so inobservant of themselves that they remembered not or reflected not upon their own acts, or they were so ignorant of the divine law that they thought there was no harm in them, and that what they did could not be construed into despising God's name, or they were so atheistical as to imagine that though they knew their own guilt yet God did not, or they were so scornful in their conduct towards God and his prophets that they took a pride in bantering a serious and just reproof, and turning it off with a jest. They either laugh at the reproof, as those that despise it, and harden their hearts against it, or they laugh it off, as those that resolve they will not be touched by it, or will not seem to be so. Which way soever we take it, their defence was their offence, and, in justifying themselves, their own tongues condemned them, and their saying, Wherein have we

despised thy name? proved them proud and perverse. Had they asked this question with a humble desire to be told more particularly wherein they had offended, it would have been an evidence of their repentance, and would have given hopes of their reformation; but to ask it thus in disdain and defiance of the word of God

argues their hearts fully set in them to do evil. ,ote, Sinners ruin themselves by studying to baffle their own convictions; but they will find it hard to kick against the

pricks."

10B. Henry gives us the best comments on their calling the Lord's table contemptible. He wrote, "They despised God's name in what they said, in the low opinion they had of his institutions: “You say in your hearts, and perhaps speak it out when you priests get together over your cups. out of the hearing of the people, The table of the Lord is contemptible” (Mal_1:7), and again (Mal_1:12), “You say, The table of the Lord is polluted; it is to be no more regarded than any other table.” Either the table in the temple, on which the show-bread was placed, is that which they reflect upon (not understanding the mystery of it, they despised it as an insignificant thing), or rather the altar of burnt-offerings is here called the table, for there God, and his priests, and his people, did, as it were, feast together upon the sacrifices, in token of friendship. This they thought was contemptible. Formerly, in the days of superstition, it was thought contemptible in comparison with the idolatrous alters that the heathen had, and was set aside to make room for a new-fashioned one (2Ki_16:14, 2Ki_16:15); now it is thought contemptible in comparison with their own tables, and those of their great men: The fruit thereof, even his meat,

is contemptible. Those who served at the altar were to live upon the altar; but they complained that they lived poorly and meanly, and that it was not worth while to attend the service of the altar for the fruit and meat of it, for it was very ordinary and always the same again; they had no dainties, no varieties, no nice dishes. ,ay, that part of the sacrifices which was given to God, the blood and the fat, they looked upon with contempt, as not worthy the multitude of laws God had made about it; they asked, “What need is there of so much ado about burning the fat and pouring out the blood?” ,ote, Those greatly profane and pollute God's name who despise the business of religion, though it is very honourable, as not worth taking pains in, and the advantages of religion, though highly valuable, as not worth taking pains for. Those who live in a careless neglect of holy ordinances, who come to them and attend on them irreverently, and go away from them never the better and under no concern, do in effect say, “The table of the Lord is contemptible; there is neither virtue nor value in it, neither credit nor comfort from it.”

11. Keil & Delitsch, "The contempt on the part of the priests of the name of Jehovah, i.e., of the glory in which God manifested Himself in Israel, was seen in the fact that they offered polluted bread upon the altar of Jehovah. Lechem, bread or food, does not refer to the shew-bread, for that was not offered upon the altar, but is the sacrificial flesh, which is called in Lev_21:6, Lev_21:8, Lev_21:17, the food (lechem) of God (on the application of this epithet to the sacrifices, see the remarks in our comm. on Lev_3:11, Lev_3:16). The prophet calls this food מגאל, polluted, blemished, not so much with reference to the fact, that the priests offered the sacrifices in a hypocritical or impure state of mind (Ewald), as because, according to Mal_1:8, the sacrificial animals were affected with blemishes (mūm), or had something corrupt (moshchâth) about them (Lev_22:20-25). The reply, “Wherewith have we defiled Thee?” is to be explained from the idea that either touching or

eating anything unclean would defile a person. In this sense they regard the offering of defiled food to God as defiling God Himself. The prophet answers: In that ye represent the table of Jehovah as something contemptible. The table of Jehovah is the altar, upon which the sacrifices (i.e., the food of God) were laid. נבזה has the force of an adjective here: contemptible. They represent the altar as contemptible not so much in words or speeches, as in their practice, viz., by offering up bad, despicable sacrificial animals, which had blemishes, being either blind, lame, or diseased, and which were unfit for sacrifices on account of these blemishes, according to the law in Lev_22:20. Thus they violated both reverence for the altar and also reverence for Jehovah."

12. It is truly pathetic that men can be so evil and not even realize it. They were shocked at God's criticism, for they did not see any evil at all in their attitudes or actions. They were just like this young man: A ninth-grade civics teacher had to issue one student an F. The boy reacted as though the teacher had caught him by surprise,by asking, “How come?” “You didn’t pass a single test,” the teacher explained. “Younever turned in one homework assignment. You would not participate in classroom work.” The boy stood there in silence for a moment, then exclaimed, “And you mean you flunked me for that?” (Reader/s Digest [4/79], p. 64.)

13. It can be a blessing to the poor when we give them our old possessions, and the things that we no longer want because we have purchased new things. But to give the Lord who is the King of kings our left overs is contemptable and sacriligious. God is worthy of our very best and nothing less.

May our best be offered to You,

Gracious God, Almighty King;

As we come to You in worship,

Let our lives Your praises sing. --Sper

8. When you bring blind animals for sacrifice, is that not wrong? When you sacrifice crippled 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.

1. The next time there is a birthday party for your boss, or some other important leader in your life, try giving him you old shirt with a worn collar and faded colors, and see if he is impressed when he opens the package to see you have given him that which cost you nothing. He will be insulted by such a gift, and God is also insulted when we give him our cast aways and worthless things that we don't want anyway. The costless gift is a sign of disrespect, and that is what we see in the Jews who were offering to God animals that they had to get rid of anyway. They were giving to God what we give to the Goodwill store. It was stuff that had lost its value. Someone wrote, "God asks, "Why not offer it to your governor?" Why don’t you give this kind of offering to the Persian Governor? It’s a sarcastic question. "Would he be pleased with you? Or would he receive you kindly?” says the Lord of hosts. Even the Governor - who was a nobody compared to God - even the Governor would reject the garbage they were offering." "God challenges the priests to offer these types of gifts to the governor! They risked being executed for insulting him publicly and pouring contempt on him!"

1B. Alexander Maclaren, "A word of explanation may indicate my purpose in selecting this, I am afraid, unfamiliar text. The Prophet has been vehemently rebuking a characteristic mean practice of the priests, who were offering maimed and diseased animals in sacrifice. They were probably dishonest as well as mean, because the worshippers would bring sound beasts, and the priests, for their own profit, slipped in a worthless animal, and kept the valuable one for themselves. They had become so habituated to this piece of economical religion, that they saw no harm in it, and when they offered the lame and the sick and the blind for sacrifice they said to themselves, ‘It is not evil.’ And so Malachi, with the sudden sharp thrust of my text, tries to rouse their torpid consciences. He says to them: ‘Take that diseased creature that you are not ashamed to lay on God’s altar, and try what the governor’—the official appointed by the Persian Kings to rule over the returned exiles—‘will think about it. Will an offering of that sort be considered a compliment or an insult? Do you think it will smooth your way or help your suit with him? Surely God deserves as much reverence as the deputy of Artaxerxes. Surely what is not good enough for a Persian satrap is not good enough for the Lord of Hosts. Offer it to the governor, will he be pleased with it? Will he accept thy person?"

2. Calvin wrote, “Ye offer to me lame and blind animals, which I have forbidden to be offered; that you act unfaithfully towards me is sufficiently apparent; and if ye say that these are small things and of no moment, I answer, that you ought to have regarded the end for which I designed that sacrifices should be offered to me, and ordered bread to be laid on my table in the sanctuary; for by these tokens you ought to have known that I live in the midst of you, and that whatever ye eat or drink is sacred to me, and that all you possess comes to you through my bounty. As then this end for which sacrifices have been appointed has been neglected by you, it is quite evident that ye have no care nor concern for true religion.

He afterwards adds, Offer this now to thy governor; will he be pleased with thee? God here complains that less honor is given to him than to mortals; for he adduces this comparison, “When any one owes a tribute or tax to a governor, and brings any thing maimed or defective, he will not receive it.” Hence he draws this inference, that he was extremely insulted, for the Jews dared to offer him what every mortal would reject. He thus reasons from the less to the greater, that this was not a sacrilege that could be borne, as the Jews had so presumptuously abused his kindness." Another comments,"Will a secular ruler be pleased with such a defective gift? And if not, why do you think that I, the Lord of all, should be content to accept your throw away animals as a gift that pleases?"

3. Henry, "And as to the beasts they offered, though the law was express that what was offered in sacrifice should not have a blemish, yet they brought the blind, and

the lame, and the sick (Mal_1:8), and again (Mal_1:13), the torn, and the lame, and

the sick, that was ready to die of itself. They looked no further than the burning of the sacrifice, and they pleaded that it was a pity to burn it if it was good for any thing else. The people were so far convinced of their duty that they would bring sacrifices; they durst not wholly omit the duty, but they brought vain oblations, mocked God, and deceived themselves, by bringing the worst they had; and the priests, who should have taught them better, accepted the gifts brought to the altar and offered them up there, because, if they should refuse them, the people would bring none at all, and then they would lose their perquisites; and therefore, having more regard to their own profit than to God's honour, they accepted that which they knew he would not accept. Some make Mal_1:8 to be a continuation of what the priests profanely said Mal_1:7, You say to the people, If you offer the blind for

sacrifice, it is not evil; or the lame and the sick, it is not evil. ,ote, It is a very evil thing, whether men think so or no, to offer the blind and the lame, the torn and the sick, in sacrifice to God. If we worship God ignorantly, and without understanding, we bring the blind for sacrifice; if we do it carelessly, and without consideration, if we are cold, and dull, and dead, in it, we bring the sick; if we rest in the bodily exercise, and do not make heart-work of it, we bring the lame; and, if we suffer vain thoughts and distractions to lodge within us, we bring the torn. And is not this evil?

Is it not a great affront to God and a great wrong and injury to our own souls? Do not our books tell us, nay, do not our own hearts tell us, that this is evil? for God, who is the best, ought to be served with the best we have."

4. Stephen Schwartz, "These men are merely offering their flocks for the form of sacrifice and for the appearance of fulfilling the law. How? They are offering to God the blind, the lame and the sick; keeping for themselves the best of the their flocks.

Why is this wrong? The offerings these men were putting on the altar were of little value to them and God always places great value on an offering by how much it cost the man that brought it, not a dollar figure but a love figure.Illustration: As Jesus watched the men walking by and dropping their offerings into the temple treasury, there came a woman who dropped in only two mites. He saw

that the men gave of their abundance but the poor woman gave of all she had. He measured the gift then, as he still does today, by how much it cost the giver.Today, men are still bringing into the church the things they do not need. There are many who give sacrificially but there are many more who give sacrilegiously. If the giving of today’s churches were in line with the giving of the poor widow, the work of God wouldn’t be in such peril."

5. Simon Scott, "Israel’s law stated that the lambs to be offered were to be perfect – unblemished – and yet here you have the spectacle of a fleabitten second-rate animal hobbling along on crutches; and the question in everybody’s mind as they see it there, is Will it make it all the way to the altar? In other words, the people are doing their best to offer a sacrifice that is no sacrifice at all. If you have a blind three-legged lamb, who’s going to miss giving that to God? It’s no sacrifice at all – but the priests were perfectly happy with it. You can almost picture the scene: the Persian Governor in Jerusalem has had a tiring day at the office, he’s needed that long soak in the bath and now he’s dressed and waiting for dinner. The butler enters the State Dining Room and announces with great ceremony, “With the compliments of the chef.” He lifts the silver cover off the platter and presents the Governor with a scrawny, festering leg of lamb crawling with maggots. “You wouldn’t dare!” says God, “So how come you shrink me down and give me less respect than your earthly superiors?”

6. "In effect, then, God is stating that the priests would not dare to make such shoddy sacrifices even to their human rulers, yet to Him, to the God of the Universe, the One who sets up and tears down human rules, they offer substandard sacrifices. Since they have rejected Christ, they do not care. And why were the priests substituting imperfect animals for healthy, blemish free animals? To make money. The priests were reserving the healthy animals for sale to the local butchers, and using the diseased, worthless animals on the altar. "Covetousness was the root-sin that was leading them daily farther astray. The priests would not so much as shut the temple doors save for wages, or kindle the altar-fire except for gain. True love for Himself was lacking, and their holy office had been prostituted to a mere worldly profession, and use as a means of enrichment." Author unknown

7. Gill wrote, "...and if ye offer the lame and sick, is it not evil? verily it is, by the law of God, which forbids the offering of such things, Lev_22:21 this was always observed, in all sacrifices under the law, that they were perfect, and without any blemish, whether of the flock, or of the herd; and this was strictly observed, even by the Heathens themselves: so Achilles, in Homer (a), speaks of the perfect lambs and goats they offered in sacrifice; and particularly they were not to be lame, or to halt; such were reckoned choice and excellent sacrifices, which were larger and better fed than others; and which were not lame, nor diseased, nor sickly; for things future could not be known, they say, but from a sound victim (b); for they pretended to have knowledge of them, by the entrails of the sacrifices. So Pliny (c) observes, that this is to be remarked, that calves brought to the altar on men's shoulders are not to be sacrificed; nor are the gods appeased by one that halts; in short, it is said (d), whatever is not perfect and sound is not to be offered to them; and, besides these

here mentioned in the text, there were many others, which the Jews especially observed, which rendered creatures unfit for sacrifice. Maimonides (e) reckons up no less than fifty blemishes, by reason of which the priests under the law might not offer a creature for sacrifice: no doubt but the laws of Moses concerning this matter had a respect to the pure, perfect, and spotless sacrifice of Christ, which the legal ones were typical of; and teach us this lesson, that, without a complete sacrifice, no atonement or satisfaction for sin could be made:"

8. Piper refers to the story in 2 Samuel 24:24. David was trying to avert a plague. To do so he needed a place to build an altar to offer sacrifices to the Lord. The threshing floor of Araunah was in the right place and Araunah offers the threshing floor and animals to David for nothing. But David responds, ",o, but I will buy it of you for a price; I will not offer burnt offerings to the Lord my God which cost me nothing." In other words, I value God so much -- the sovereign freedom of his love and the majesty of his fatherhood are so satisfying to my soul -- that I cannot bring myself to worship in a way that looks as if I love money more than I love him. It must cost me something. It must say that he and not the world is my treasure."

9. One pastor explains that this problem of giving God our junk is still an issue today. He wrote, "How often this is the case even today, that we give the castoffs to God. There have been many times over the last five years or so that I've had to politely decline donations to the churches I've ministered in. Someone's car breaks down, and they buy a new one. "What are we going to do with this piece of junk? Give it to the church!" Thanks, but no thanks. The Lord doesn't want or deserve the worst you've got. "Hey, we're buying a new couch, 'cause our pets have torn up and urinated all over this one. Could the church use it?" Thanks, but no thanks."

9B. ILLUS: Paul Harvey's broadcast (11/22/95) shared this insight: The Butterball Turkey Company set up a hotline to answer consumer questions about preparing holiday turkeys. One woman called to inquire about cooking a turkey that had been in her freezer for 23 years! The operator told her it might be safe if the freezer had been kept below zero degrees the entire time. But the operator warned the woman that, even if it were safe, the flavor had probably deteriorated, and she wouldn't recommend eating it. The caller replied, "That's what we thought. We'll just give it to the Church." Leadership Magazine: Summer 1996 page 71

10. Maclaren has this closing word for Christians: "It is ,ew Testament teaching that our faithful administration of earthly possessions has a bearing on the future. Remember what Jesus Christ said, ‘That when ye fail they may receive you into everlasting habitations.’ Remember what His Apostle says, ‘Laying up in store for themselves a good foundation against the time to come, that they may lay hold on eternal life.’ Let no fear of imperilling the great truth of salvation by faith lead us to forget that the faith which saves manifests its vitality and genuineness, by its effects upon our lives, and that no small part of our lives is concerned with the right acquisition and right use of these perishable outward gifts. And let us take care that we do not, in our dread of damaging the free grace of God, forget that although we do not earn blessedness, here or hereafter, by gifts whilst we are living or legacies

when we are dead, the administration of money has an important part to play in shaping Christian character, and the Christian character which we acquire here settles our hereafter."

11. These people could not understand that they were terrible. They were blind to their defects, and we not aware like the lady in this story: In the middle of the soloist’s number at church, my young grandson Chandler tugged on my sleeve and whispered, "She can’t sing very well, can she?"Knowing the woman had a deep love for the Lord, I said, "Chandler, she sings from her heart. That’s what makes it good." He nodded thoughtfully. Several days later as he and I were singing along with the car radio, Chandler stopped and said, ",ana, you sing from your heart, don’t you?" - Barbara McKeever. This grandma knew he was saying she was not very good, but the Jews in our text could not grasp that they were worse than not good, but downright evil.

9. ",ow implore God to be gracious to us. With such offerings from your hands, will he accept you?"--says the LORD Almighty.

1. This is an ackward construction, and a difficult verse to grasp. Commentators struggle to figure it out. Gill for example gives several possible meanings. He wrote, "These are the words of the prophet to the priests; and are spoken either seriously, exhorting them to that part of their office which lay in interceding for the people that God would be gracious to them, and forgive their sins; and the rather, inasmuch as they had been the means of their sin, and accessary to it, who ought to have reproved them for bringing such offerings, and should have refused to offer them for them; or otherwise, if they did not do this, they could not expect that God would accept their persons, and their offerings: or else ironically, now you have offered such sacrifices to the Lord, as the blind, the lame, and sick, go and intercede for the people; pray that their sins may be forgiven them, and that the curse may be removed from them, and see how you will succeed:" "....can you ever imagine that God will have any respect to your persons or prayers, when you have acted so vile a part, and been the cause of so much sin and evil? no, he will not, as is asserted in the following verse Mal_1:10."

2. The Message puts it this way, "Get on your knees and pray that I will be gracious to you. You priests have gotten everyone in trouble. With this kind of conduct, do you think I'll pay attention to you?" The gist of it seems to be that they have the audacity to think they will be treated with kid gloves and be forgiven for their dispicable behavior that polluted the name of God and led the people into terrible sins. God says such positive thinking is not going to work this time. God is not going to go along with their scheme. You can fool most of the people, but God is not

fooled, and he will not accept such corrupt worship. They have rejected him, and he will reject them and their offerings. This kind of thing would not be accepted on any human level, and certainly God is not going to accept garbage as a valid offering.

3. Edward Dennett has one of the best comments. "The prophet thereon proceeds (as it seems to us) in a tone of irony, "And now, I pray you, beseech God that He will be gracious unto us: this hath been by your means" (or, from your hand): "will He regard your persons? saith the Lord of hosts." "If I regard iniquity in my heart," says the Psalmist, "the Lord will not hear me." But these priests, spite of their condition — utterly indifferent and insensible as they were — did not hesitate to appear before God as if all were well. Pray, then, says the prophet, intercede that God may be gracious to us, and see if He will regard your persons. It is often a characteristic of a backslidden state that the outward forms of piety are continued, and sometimes with increased zeal. In proportion as life decays the attention is directed to rites and ceremonies. The soul thus deceives itself, and slides, as in the case before us, into a state of ignorance of its real condition. Losing all sense of its relationship with God, it places its dependence upon the exact performance of the required ceremonial. The Pharisees, for example, were most scrupulous in cleansing the outside of the cup and the platter, while they were perfectly indifferent concerning their inward cleansing."

4. Ed Spencer was attending ,orthwestern University at Evanston, Illinois. Ed was a rather well-known athlete of his day, for he was one of the first to win a gold medal for the United States in the Olympics. The campus of ,orthwestern is bordered one side by Lake Michigan. One evening, as Ed was doing his studies in the library. Outside a storm was raging. All of a sudden some fellows came running in shouting, "The Lady. Elgin has just been thrown in the rocks and is sinking."

Ed ran from the Library out to the lake and saw the situation was indeed serious. Without a moments hesitation, he rid himself of. any extra clothing which might hinder him and he dived in the rolling, chopping waves. He was able to reach the wreck and, fighting his way back, he brought the first person to safety. He had repeated this heroic effort several more times when those on shore said, "Ed, you've done all you can. You'll surely kill yourself if you try it anymore." Ed's reply was, "I've got to go my best." He plunged again and brought another one to safety, and another and another until he had rescued 17 people. He could go no further and fell unconscious on shore. All through the night, as he lay in the infirmary, he kept repeating, "Have I done my best, fellows? Fellows, have I done my best?" He had done his best but the experience cost him his health. Years later, inspired by the story, Ensign Edwin Young wrote the song, Have I Done My Best For Jesus?

I wonder, have I done my best for Jesus,

Who died upon the cruel tree?

To think of His great sacrifice at Calvary!

I know my Lord expects the best from me.

5. It is just common sense that God demands and deserves our best, but they were content to offer their second and third best, and even their worst to their Lord. It was shameful and disgraceful, and one wonders if God ever regretted choosing these people to represent him on the earth. ,othing but the best we have is good enough for our Lord who gave his all for us.

Give of your best to the Master;Give of the strength of your youth.Throw your soul’s fresh, glowing ardorInto the battle for truth.Jesus has set the example,Dauntless was He, young and brave.Give Him your loyal devotion;Give Him the best that you have.

Refrain

Give of your best to the Master;Give of the strength of your youth.Clad in salvation’s full armor,Join in the battle for truth.

Give of your best to the Master;Give Him first place in your heart.Give Him first place in your service;Consecrate every part.Give, and to you will be given;God His beloved Son gave.Gratefully seeking to serve Him,Give Him the best that you have. Howard B. Grose

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.

1. People might think that bad religion is better than no religion at all, and that any worship is better than no worship at all. That would not be God's view, however, for he says here that things would be better if they just locked the doors of the temple and never entered to light useless fires for the sacrifices. It would be better that you just cease being worshipers than that you continue to be so contemptible worshipers. There is nothing you do here in the temple that pleases me, and so why bother to keep up this fake show of faith and belief that only makes me angry at you? A closed church is better than one open for people to practice their hypocracy, and bring shame on the name of God by worthless worship. God says you have gotten so corrupt that the best way to please me is to stop trying altogether, for all you do is displeasing. Lock the doors, throw the key away, and stay home rather than pretend that what you do in the temple has any resemblance to what is true faith in God. Put up the sign "Out of Business," and quit trying to fake a faith that everyone can see is a mockery of God and his Word. In essence, God is firing his priests. They are of no value in teaching the people how to live in obedience to God, and so he is ready to close down the whole sordid affair of their so called religion. What a paradox that religious leaders can be so irreligious that God is in fovor of ending religious services. People are better off on their own than by being led by such blind religious leaders.

2. "I tried to think myself into that: surely it’s the voice of jilted love there, isn’t it? God is saying that He’d prefer to be treated with outright hostility than with this parody of love. So He cries out: “If there was just one priest here who had the honesty and the guts to shut the whole thing down, I’d be happier than I am with everyone playing games." Author unknown

3. God had already demonstrated his willingness to shut down the temple if it was just a place where people came to abuse his name. He allowed the pagan people to come and destroy the temple and carry his people away. He has no pleasure in false religion, even when it is in his own temple, and by his own people. He did it again in 70 A. D. when his people refused to accept his Son as their Messiah. After the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross, all other sacrifices were worthless and meaningless. They would not accept God's sacrifice and continued to offer their own worthless sacrifices, and the result was that God ended their meaningless sacrifices forever by bringing the Romans to totally destroy his temple, and end their whole outmoded system of religion. They would not cease offering what was not acceptable to God, and so he shut them down.God said once and for all, "You do it my way, or I will end your way for good." God closed the door on animal sacrifice, and the whole Old Testament system of religious worship. He shut down the temple, and did more than lock the doors, for he brought it to the ground. He said in a loud voice, "False and fake religion is not acceptable. I will have valid honor and respect in worship or no worship at all."

4. David Roper, "Do you see what he is saying? It would be far better to close the gates, to shut down the temple, to stop offering, than to offer this sort of worship. ,o worship at all is better than a halfhearted sacrifice. That is an amazing statement when seen in the context of Jewish worship. For the Jew, worship only happened in Jerusalem. It had to happen there. God said, "That is the city upon which I have written my name." Three times a year Jews had to present themselves before the temple. Though throughout their history they worshiped in high places away fromthe temple, that was never acceptable. If they were going to act strictly according to the law, they had to present themselves at the temple. That was the only place worship could take place. And God said it would be far better that you not worship at all, than that you do so in this halfhearted way. Just shut the temple down."

5. God does not need any sacrifice let alone those that are corrupted, but he does demand it of his people for their sakes not his own. Keil dealt with this issue as he wrote, "God does indeed need no sacrifices for the maintenance of His existence, and He does not demand them for this purpose, but He demands them as signs of the dependence of men upon Him, or of the recognition on the part of men that they are indebted to God for life and every other blessing, and owe Him honour, praise, and thanksgiving in return. In this sense God needs sacrifices, because otherwise He would not be God to men on earth; and from this point of view the argument that God did not want to receive the reprehensible sacrifices of the Israelitish priests, because sacrifices were offered to Him by the nations of the earth in all places, and therefore His name was and remained great notwithstanding the desecration of it on the part of Israel, was a very proper one for attacking the delusion, that God needs sacrifices for His own sustenance; a delusion which the Israelitish priests, against whom Malachi was contending, really cherished, if not in thesi, at all events in praxi, when they thought any sacrificial animal good enough for God."

11. My name will be great among the nations, from the rising to the setting of the sun. In every place incense and pure offerings will be brought to my name, because my name will be great among the nations," says the LORD Almighty.

1. God speaks to their pride that makes them think that they are the only people who can please him and worship him. They are his chosen ones, and so they think God has limited himself to their faith and worship. He is their God, and others can have their own gods as well, but our God is the God of Israel. They want God to be their's only, and so they have exclusive rights to his favor and blessings. They will not be happy to receive the message of this verse, for God says he is not exclusively

their's at all. In fact, he intends to have people all over the world in all the Gentile nations worshiping him in the way he expects to be worshiped. They will not be faking it with putrid offerings but with pure offerings out of a pure faith in who he is as Lord of all.

2. Here is a prediction that out of Judaism will come a spiritual movement that will go way beyond the Jews and reach the Gentiles of the world, and there will be a universal honor and respect for the God of Israel. The whole world will worship Him, and this is true today through the church. God's prophecy has been fulfilled, and all over the world people worship God through his Son Jesus Christ, and they offer up their sacrifices of praise, and their bodies as living sacrifices. The counterpart of all these sheep and oxen and pigeons and doves is found today in the words of the Apostle Paul, in Romans 12:1: “I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship.”

3. Calvin shows his strong feelings against the Jews here as he comments, "Here God shows that he no longer cared for the Jews, for he would bid altars to be reared for him everywhere and through all parts of the world, that he might be purely worshipped by all nations...It would have been then the highest honor to the Jews had they become teachers to all nations, so as to instruct them in true religion. So also Isaiah says, that is, that those who were before aliens would become the disciples of the chosen people, so that they would willingly submit to their teaching. But as the Jews have fallen from their place, the Gentiles have succeeded and occupied their position. Hence it is that the Prophets when speaking of the calling of the Gentiles, often denounce it as a punishment on the Jews; as though they had said, that when they were repudiated there would be other children of God, whom he would substitute in their place, according to what Christ threatened to the men of his age, “Taken away from you shall be the kingdom of God, and shall be given to another nation.” (Matthew 21:43.)

4. Calvin goes on, "Such is this prophecy: for our Prophet does not simply open to the Gentiles the temple of God, to connect them with the Jews and to unite them in true religion; but he first excludes the Jews, and shows that the worship of God would be exercised in common by the Gentiles, for the doctrine of salvation would be propagated to the utmost extremities of the earth.......The Prophet then does not here promise, as we have often stated in other places, that the whole world would be subject to God, so that true religion would everywhere prevail, but he brands the Jews with reproach, as though he had said, “God has repudiated you, but he will find other sons for himself, who will occupy your place.” He had repudiated in the last verse their sacrifices, and we know how haughtily the Jews gloried in the holiness of their race. As then they were inflated with so much pride, they thought that God would be no God except he had them as his holy Church. The Prophet here answers them, and anticipates their objection by saying, that God’s name would be celebrated through the whole world: “Ye are a few people, all the nations will unite in one body to worship God together; God then will not stand in need of

you, and after he rejects you his kingdom will not decay. Ye indeed think that his kingdom cannot be safe, and that his glory will perish except he is worshipped by you; but I now declare to you, that the worship of God will flourish everywhere, even after he shall cast you out of his family.”

5. Calvin continues, "...here the Prophet includes the punishment which the Jews had deserved, as though he had said, that after they were rejected by God on account of their ingratitude, the Gentiles would become holy to God, because he would adopt them instead of that wicked and ungodly people. Though then the words of the Prophet are metaphorical, yet their meaning is plain enough — that God will be worshipped and adored everywhere. But what are the sacrifices of the ,ew Testament? They are prayers and thanksgivings, according to what the Apostle says in the last chapter of the epistle to the Hebrews. There was also under the law the spiritual worship of God, as it is especially stated in the fiftieth psalm; but there were then shadows connected with it, as it is intimated in these words of Christ —

“,ow is come the hour when the Father shall be worshipped in spirit and in truth.” (John 4:13.)

He does not indeed deny that God was worshipped in spirit by the fathers; but as that worship was concealed under outward rites, he says that now under the gospel the simple, and, so to speak, the naked truth is taught. What then the Prophet says of offering and incense availed under the law; but we must now see what God commands in his gospel, and how he would have us to worship him. We do not find there any incense or sacrifices. This passage contains nothing else than that the time would come when the pure and spiritual worship of God would prevail in all places."

6. Calvin seems to fully support what is called replacement theology, which means that the promises to Israel in the Old Testament are now the promises to the Gentile church. Judaism was rejected and Christianity has now repleced it as God's people. It is too complicated to deal with it here, for Christians disagree strongly on where Isreal fits into God's plan at this point. All we know for sure from this text is that God did judge Judaism severely and totally destroyed its temple and forms of worship as layed out in Old Testament law, and began in Christ a new form of the faith of God's people, founded on the sacrifice once for all of his Son Jesus Christ. He has made this prophecy become a reality in our world today.

7. Henry wrote, "Instead of those carnal ordinances, which they profaned, a spiritual way of worship shall be introduced and established: Incense shall be

offered to God's name (which signifies prayer and praise, Psa_141:2; Rev_8:3), instead of the blood and fat of bulls and goats. And it shall be a pure offering,

refined, not only from the corruptions that were in the priests' practice, but from the mere bodily exercise that was in the institutions themselves, which are called carnal ordinances, imposed till the time of reformation, Heb_9:10. When the hour

came in which the true worshippers worshipped the Father in spirit and in truth, then this incense was offered, even this pure offering. (2.) Instead of his being worshipped and served among the Jews only, a small people in a corner of the world, he will be served and worshipped in all places, from the rising of the sun to the going down of

the same; in every place, in every part of the world, incense shall be offered to his

name; nations shall be discipled, and shall speak of the wonderful works of God, and have them spoken to them in their own language. This is a plain prediction of that great revolution in the kingdom of grace by which the Gentiles, who had been strangers and foreigners, came to be fellow-citizens with the saints and of the

household of God, and as welcome to the throne of grace as ever the Jews had been. It is twice said (for the thing was certain), My name shall be great among the

Gentiles, whereas hitherto in Judah only he was known, and his name was great,

Psa_76:1. God's name shall be declared to them, the declaration of it shall be received and believed, and there shall be those among the Gentiles who shall magnify and glorify the name of God better than ever the Jews had done, even the priests themselves.

8. Clarke, "The total abolition of the Mosaic sacrifices, and the establishment of a spiritual worship over the whole earth, is here foretold. The incense of praise, and the pure offering of the Lamb without spot, and through him a holy, loving heart, shall be presented everywhere among the Gentiles; and the Jews and their mock offerings shall be rejected."

9. Barnes quotes the strong language of Jesus who, "declared the rejection of the Jews, sealing their own sentence against themselves Mat_21:41, Mat_21:43, “I say unto you, The kingdom of God shall be taken from you, and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof;” and before Mat_8:11-12, “Many shall come from the East and West, and shall sit down with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven, and the children of the kingdom shall be cast out into outer darkness.”

10. Jamison, "Since ye Jewish priests and people “despise My name” (Mal_1:6), I shall find others who will magnify it (Mat_3:9). Do not think I shall have no worshippers because I have not you; for from the east to the west My name shall be great among the Gentiles (Isa_66:19, Isa_66:20), those very peoples whom ye look down upon as abominable. Pure offering — not “the blind, the lame, and the sick,” such as ye offer (Mal_1:8). “In every place,” implies the catholicity of the Christian Church (Joh_4:21, Joh_4:23; 1Ti_2:8). The “incense” is figurative of prayers

(Psa_141:2; Rev_8:3). “Sacrifice” is used metaphorically (Psa_51:17; Heb_13:10, Heb_13:15, Heb_13:16; 1Pe_2:5, 1Pe_2:12). In this sense the reference to the Lord’s Supper, maintained by many of the fathers, may be admitted; it, like prayer, is a spiritual offering, accepted through the literal offering of the “Lamb without blemish,” once for all slain.

12. "But you profane it by saying of the Lord's table, `It is defiled,' and of its food, `It is contemptible.'

1. My name will be great and greatly honored among the Gentiles, but you do just the opposite by profaning my name and defiling the worship of my name with your contemptible sacrifices. You think you are the people, and nobody else really counts in your value system, but you are dead wrong, for the people you despise as Gentile trash are jewels compared to you. Through them I will get honor and respect, but through you I get only contempt as you turn the beautiful experience of sacrifice into a comedy of errors so obvious that even you declare it to be contemptible. One thing I agree with you on is that you have made something I made precious and beautiful to be worthless and shameful.

2. Calvin, "He gives a reason, and at the same time enhances their guilt: for they might have complained, that God not only put them on a level with the Gentiles, but also rejected them, and substituted aliens in their place. He shows that God had a just cause for disinheriting them, and for adopting the Gentiles as his children, for they had polluted God’s name. He at the same time amplifies their sin, when he says, “The Gentiles, by whom I have been hitherto despised, and to whom my name was not made known, will soon come to the faith; thus my name shall be great, it shall be reverently worshipped by all nations; but ye have polluted it.” It was certainly very strange, that the Jews, peculiarly chosen and illuminated by the doctrine of the Law, so presumptuously polluted God’s worship, as though they despised him, and that the Gentiles, being novices, rendered obedience to God as soon as they tasted of the truth of religion, so that his glory became through them illustrious."

13. And you say, `What a burden!' and you sniff at it contemptuously," says the LORD Almighty. "When you bring injured, crippled or diseased animals and offer them as sacrifices, should I accept them from your hands?" says the LORD.

1. The whole process of sacrificing became a burden to the priests, for it was meaningless to them. They lost completely the purpose of it, and what they were to

be teaching the people through it all. It was just a laborious task, and very messy to boot, and they considere there duties a burden. Religion and all of its duties is a burden to those who have no love for God, and no desire to please him. Just going to church is a burden to millions. It is just a pain to get out of bed on Sunday morning and go to church, for what is the point of it all? This is how so many really feel, and they feel that way because God had no real value in their lives. They are unbelievers, and that is what the priests in Israel were at this point in time.

2. The sacrifices to God were to be sweet smelling offerings that would please the nostrils of all who caught a wiff of the smoke coming off the animals being roasted on the altar of sacrifice. Even God enjoyed the oder of steaks on the grill. These priests did not enter in at all to the beauty of it, and enjoy what God intended his people to enjoy as they fellowshiped together in a feast of thanksgiving to God for his love and mercy in their lives. They sniff at the sacrifice contemptuously as just another stupid religious meal that takes them away from what they would rather be doing with their time. The whole thing was a big bore,and to make it worse they were often cooking diseased animals that would be unfit for eating. Who knows what stinking smoke would be coming from these aweful carcases? They had basically destroyed the whole purpose of God's plan in giving the laws of sacrifice. It was a burden to them, and it was a burden to God to watch the whole shameful process. He wanted them to lock up and go home rather than put on this sacriligeous sham. He tells them he will not accept any of their sacrifices anyway, and so they just as well call it quits.

3. Clarke gives us an interesting picture: "Ye have snuffed at it - A metaphor taken from cattle which do not like their fodder. They blow strongly through their nose upon it; and after this neither they nor any other cattle will eat it."

3B. Levy: Malachi enumerated four charges that God had against the priests. First, they approached their ministry halfheartedly. . . Second, they “sniffed at” their service before the Lord (v. 13). They turned up their noses in belittlement at serving in God’s Temple, as one who turns away from obnoxious food. They considered their priestly duties to be a burden, a dull ritualistic routine performed mechanically with no care. Such service would become wearisome. Third, the priests allowed people to bring sacrifices that were “torn . . . lame . . . sick” (v. 13), an act condemned by the Law. For the priest to offer such sacrifices was the epitome of spiritual debauchery. . . Fourth, God pronounced a curse on those who made deceptive vows. They were tricksters who played games with God. They vowed to sacrifice an unblemished male animal on the altar, then substituted a blemished male or a female animal (less valuable) in its place (v. 14). . ."

4. Jamison, "Ye regard God’s service as irksome, and therefore try to get it over by presenting the most worthless offerings. Compare Mic_6:3, where God challenges His people to show wherein is the “weariness” or hardship of His service. Also Isa_43:22-24, wherein He shows that it is they who have “wearied” Him, not He who

has wearied them." In other words, you think it is a burden to you, and a wearisome task, but you don't know how weary it makes me, and how great a burden it is that I feel. I have had it with you, and I will get my relief from your burden by rejecting you and casting you off from my back, and getting a people with whom I can share pleasure rather than pain. You turn your nose up at my sacrifice, but when I turn my nose up at you, you will be the sacrifice. (This is reading more into what God actually said, but it seems to be the message of judgment he is trying to get across to these wicked worshipers.)

5. Calvin, "We now understand the import of the words; but we must remember what I have said — that God required not the performance of external rites, because he had need of meat and drink, or because he set a great value on these sacrifices, but on account of their design. The sacrifices then which God demanded from his ancient people had in themselves nothing that promoted true religion; nor could the odour of sacrifices of itself delight God; but the end was to be regarded. As then God ordered and commanded sacrifices to be offered to him, that he might exercise his people in penitence and faith, it was for this reason that he valued them. But when the people had fallen into gross contempt of them, that they brought to God, as it were to insult him, the maimed and the lame, their extremely base and intolerable impiety, as I have already said, was made fully evident. This is the reason why the Prophet now so vehemently chides the priests and the whole people; they offered to God such sacrifices as man would have rejected."

6. Gill,"Ye said also, Behold, what a weariness is it?.... These are either the words of the priests, saying what a wearisome and fatiguing business the temple service was to them, for which they thought they were poorly paid; such as slaying the sacrifices; removing the ashes from the altar; putting the wood in order; kindling the fire, and laying the sacrifice on it: or of the people that brought the sacrifice, who, when they brought a lamb upon their shoulders, and laid it down, said, how weary are we with bringing it, suggesting it was so fat and fleshy; so Kimchi and Abarbinel, to which sense the Targum seems to agree;"

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. What a puny view of God these people had. He was not much, if any, bigger than the idols the pagans whittled out of a block of wood that you could hold in your

hand. The real God can be made to be just like the false gods in the minds of people. We see it here in that people can make a promise to give God a worthy sacrifice and then cheat him out of it by substituting a lamb that had been attacked by a wolf and was half torn to shreds. This creature that was now of no value to anyone was chosen to be his gift to God. ,obody else would have it, so lets pawn it off on God. He probably won't know the difference, for who knows where he is at anyway. Such pathetic thinking showed just how little their God was in their minds. He was so small that he did not deserve the best. In fact, he was on a level where the worst was good enough. This is just how low people can become in their view of the true and only living God of the universe. Here we have religion at the bottom of the pile. Here is religion that is so irreligious that it makes atheism seem more attractive, for it would be less blasphemous than what we see taking place here.

2. Here is a paradox where a man in seeking to carry out his religious obligations is cursed by the God he seeks to please. In reality he was only trying to please himself. He would have been better off not to sacrifice to God at all than to give God his worst animal. How stupid do people think God can be to be fooled by such nonsense? They are playing bate and switch with God, and hope they can get by with cheating him and coming out a winner. Here is a perfect picture of a fool. Maybe this helps us understand why God never sent another prophet to these people for 400 years. God had had it with this foolishness that pretended to be a religious faith. God says he will focus his attention on the nations of the Gentiles from this point on, for he can see that he will get the respect he deserves if he goes in that direction.

3. Barnes,"They sinned, not against religion only, but against justice also. “For as a merchant, who offers his goods at a certain price, if he supply them afterward adulterated and corrupted, is guilty of fraud and is unjust, so he who promised to God a sacrifice worthy of God, and, according to the law, perfect and sound, is fraudulent and sins against justice, if he afterward gives one, defective, mutilated, vitiated, and is guilty of theft in a sacred thing, and so of sacrilege.”

Clergy or “all who have vowed, should learn hence, that what they have vowed should be given to God, entire, manly, perfect, the best. For, reverence for the Supreme and Divine Majesty to whom they consecrate themselves demandeth this, that they should offer Him the highest, best and most perfect, making themselves a whole-burnt-offering to God.”

3B. Barnes wrote, "My ,ame is dreadful among the pagan - Absence of any awe of God was a central defect of these Jews. They treated Him, as they would not a fellow-creature, for whom they had any respect or awe or fear. Some remaining instinct kept them from parting with Him; but they yielded a cold, wearisome, heartless service. Malachi points to the root of the evil, the ignorance, how awful God is. This is the root of so much irreverence in people’s theories, thoughts, conversations, systems, acts, of the present day also. They know neither God or themselves. The relation is summed up in those words to a saint , “Knowest thou well, Who I am, and who thou art? I am He Who Is, and thou art she who is not.”

So Job says in the presence of God Job_42:5-6, “I have heard of Thee by the hearing of the ear, but now mine eye seeth Thee: wherefore I abhor myself and repent in dust and ashes.” To correct this, God, from the beginning, insists on the title which He gives Himself. (Deu_10:16-17; Deu_7:21. ,ehemiah uses it in his prayers ,eh_1:5; ,eh_9:32 and Daniel Dan_9:4. It occurs also ,eh_4:8 (14 English) Psa_47:3; 68:36; Psa_89:8; Psa_96:4; Psa_99:3; Psa_111:9; Zep_2:11. “Circumcise the foreskin of your hearts and be no more stiff-necked: for the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, the mighty and the terrible;” and in warning Deu_28:58-59, “If thou wilt not observe to do all the words of this law that are written in this book, that thou mayest fear this glorious and fearful name, The Lord thy God, then the Lord thy God will make thy plagues wonderful” etc.

4. "In the allusion to the worship, which would be paid by all nations to the name of the Lord, there is an intimation that the kingdom of God will be taken from the Jews who despise the Lord, and given to the heathen who seek God. This intimation forms the basis for the curse pronounced in Mal_1:14 upon the despisers of God, and shows “that the kingdom of God will not perish, when the Lord comes and smites the land with the curse (Mal_4:6), but that this apparent death is the way to true life” (Hengstenberg)

5. Henry, "The character given of such worshippers. They are deceivers; they deal falsely and fraudulently with God; they play the hypocrite with him; they pretend to honour him, in making the vow, but, when it comes to be performed, they put an affront upon him, to such a degree that it would have been better not to have vowed

than to vow and thus to pay; but let not such be themselves deceived, for God is not

mocked. Those who think to put a cheat upon God will prove, in the end, to have put a damning cheat upon their own souls. Hypocrites are deceivers, and they will prove self-deceivers, and so self-destroyers. (3.) The doom passed upon them: They are cursed; they expect a blessing, but will meet with a curse, the tokens of God's wrath, according to the judgment written. (4.) The reason of this doom: “For I am a great

King, saith the Lord of hosts, and therefore will reckon with those who deal with me but as a man like themselves; my name is dreadful among the heathen, and therefore I will not bear that it should be contemptible among my own people.” The heathen paid more respect to their gods, though idols, than the Jews did to theirs, though the only true and living God. ,ote, The consideration of God's universal dominion, and the universal acknowledgment of it, should restrain us from all irreverence in his service."

6. Gill, "..had he it not in his power to do better, it might be excusable; but then it would be better not to have vowed at all; but to vow a sacrifice to the Lord, and deal deceitfully with him, when he could have brought an offering agreeable to his vow, and to the law, this is aggravated wickedness." Hallmark’s motto is ‘When you care enough to send the very best’. This man's motto was " When you couldn't care less, you send the very worst." The attitude of such men is equivalent to hate. God said I loved you but hated Esau, and they respond by saying in their actions, you should have gone the other way, for we hate you. It is a terrible thing to say, but that is

what God heard them saying, and that is why they were under his curse.

7. "We see from this, that they did have animals that were not

damaged, that they could have offered. They gave the cast-aways to

God. These were some they would have thrown away anyway. They thought

so little of God, they would do this. God spoke curses to those who

did not keep His commandments. They have brought the curse upon

themselves. They have chosen not to obey God. They have chosen to sin

greatly before God. They have become so casual about their worship,

they have forgotten His ordinances. The heathen are in awe of such a

God. They have more fear and respect for God, than His own people do.

God will not allow His people to defame Him. He is Holy. He is

Righteous. He is Almighty. He is our All in All." Author unknown

8. To treat the Lord of the universe and King of all kings like a fool who can be cheated by such a scheme is to come under his curse. The implication is that all of the Israelites were then cursed along with all of the priests, for the whole body of his people were corrupted, and God did not communicate with them anymore until he sent his Son into the world. They were cut off from God and under his curse, and it meant 400 years of silence from God. He would no longer talk to his people, for they were too deaf to his voice anyway. Why was there all of these years between the Testaments is a common question. The answer is right here. They were under God's curse for their abominable practices that dishonored the Lord.

9. God declares his name will be feared among the nations, and that is in contrast to these Israelites who have no fear of God. By fear he means respect. When you fear the king you live in obedience to his laws. When you fear the police, you obey the laws. When you fear any authority you honor and respect that authority. This is just what Israel refused to do, and that is why they were rejected by God. God had to seek a people who would fear him and respect his will, and that is why he went to the Gentiles. God made a sovereign decision to choose them as the people he would use to bring his Son into the world, but when they would not choose his Son as their Messiah and Savior, he chose to find his people among the nations where there were many who would honor and respect his will, and live in obedience to it.

10. I want to close this first chapter with comments on the great overall paradox of it. God loved Jacob and his people and sovereignly chose them to be his people. Yet he could not choose to make them love him back, for love cannot be brought about by any force, even omnipotent force. So we have an all powerful God whose power will not allow him to achieve the goal of getting his chosen people to love, honor and obey him. His people are free to choose to love and obey him, but they choose instead to make a mockery of his laws and his will for them. They choose to ignore his will and dishonor his name. God is forced by their choice to choose to go to the Gentiles to find a people to honor his name. So what this chapter set up for us is the

reality of life as we know it. God is Lord of all, and yet he is limited by the freedom he had given man. God can smash them, as he did by the Babylonians, but he cannot make them honor him. He is sovereign just like the Calvinists say, and yet he is limited by human freedom just like the Arminians say. So lets face it, there is no one man made system of theology that can explain everything. We need to deal with the reality of what Scripture is revealing to us, and work with the paradox.

11. The paradox is that God is not able to fit in any one box that men try to put him into. By his power and free choice he can and does do many things that have nothing to do with human choices. He chose Jacob and hated Esau, and he did this before they were born and had done anything good or evil. We need to keep in mind that God chose Jacob from the start, but God did not say then that he hated Esau, for it is here 1500 years later that he said that, and he had abundance of reasons after seeing the entire life of Esau and his descendants to feel this way. God did not predestined Esau to be so worldly, and for his people to be enemies of God's chosen people. It was his and their choice to go the way they did. Israel also went the way of great evil, and so God's choice was not base on who was best, for at times Israel was worse than the pagans, just as we read here in Malachi. God did not say Jacob was the best possible choice, but only that he did chose him, and brought the Messiah into the world through his line.When you read the paragraph below, you will see that God did not choose him based on how good his people would be.

12. The Lord of hosts was being cheated (Mal. 1:14), robbed (Mal. 3:8), sneered at(Mal. 1:13), insulted and treated with contempt (Mal. 1:7,12). Harsh words were being spoken against Him (Mal. 2:13), His name was being profaned (Mal. 1:12), His justice was being called into question (Mal. 2:17), and His patience was being worn thin by their words (Mal. 2:17). The people denied that God loved them (Mal. 1:2), and they had openly begun to doubt there was any advantage in serving God, complaining that God blessed the wicked more than the righteous (Mal. 3:14,15). From our vantage point, it is nearly incredible that these backsliders were still expecting God’s blessing! There was irreverence piled upon irreverence. Yet, despite all this, Israel was blindly ignorant that she had a problem. Charged with despising God’s name, the people’s dumbfounded response was: “In what way have we despised Your name?" Author unknown'

13. I will close this chapter with an interesting quote from Ben Witherington has captured the paradox of God's limitations because of man's freedom of choice, and of God's freedom of choice that is not limited by that of man. He shows that God is both limited and unlimited at the same time. He wrote these words in his comments on the novel, The Shack, which he quotes and numbers the pages. "One of the major flash points in the discussion of freedom and the reason for an insistence on it is of course that love is not something that can be forced, compelled, compulsed, pre-determined etc. To have a loving relationship with someone requires a modicum of freedom of choice, at a minimum, and the power of contrary choice. I have stressed this elsewhere in this blog, so I will not belabor the point here, but Young is basically right on this point. But how far and to what degree does this characterize

the way God relates to us. At one point Jesus in the novel says “To force my will on you…is exactly what love does not do. Genuine relationships are marked by submission even when your choices are not helpful and healthy.” (p. 146). The concept is then broached about how God has submitted himself to our human choices in various ways. The problem with this is it eliminates part of the Biblical paradox. The Bible is all about divine intervention. God is always intruding into our affairs, like a good parent should when his children are as wayward as we are. Is it really the case that God never rescues us against our will? Does God stand idly by, when a normal human parent would leap in and grab the child about to step out onto a highway and be smashed by a sixteen wheeler? Or listen to the following passage on p. 188. God says:

“Just because I work incredible good out of unspeakable tragedies doesn’t mean I orchestrate the tragedies. Don’t ever assume that my using something means I caused it or that I need it to accomplish my purposes. That will only lead to false notions about me. Grace doesn’t depend on suffering to exist, but where there is suffering you will find grace in many facets and colors.” And then God adds “my love is a lot bigger than your stupidity…I used your choices to work perfectly into my purposes.” (p. 192). ,ow it is clear enough that Young is not an universalist in the sense that he thinks all will ultimately respond positively to God’s will. But when you once allow that God is busy working all things together for good for those who love Him, whether they realize it or not, then it becomes perfectly clear, as also in cases like when God flattened Paul on the road to Damascus that there are times when God doesn’t wait on our permission to do things on our behalf, and in various cases does things that would have been against our wills at the time. And herein lies the mystery—God, by grace both gives humans limited freedom, but is prepared to intervene and make corrections, redirections etc. for God is free as well, and there is something more important than human beings ‘having it their independent way’ and that is rescuing them. A drowning person can’t save themselves, they require a radical rescue—but how they respond to that rescue thereafter, whether in loving gratitude or with a bad attitude—well that’s another matter and involves human volition."

14. The importance of seeing both sides of this paradox is that it is the only way we can see the full revelation of God. Deny one aspect and you cut yourself off from a great chunk of God's truth. I love this story because it is such a great insight into the dangers and weaknesses of Christians who discover one aspect of truth, and make that the whole of it. "Once the Devil was walking along with one of his cohorts. They saw a man ahead of them pick up something shiny. “What did he find?” asked the cohort. “A piece of the truth,” the Devil replied. “Doesn’t it bother you that he found a piece of the truth?” asked the cohort. “,o,” said the Devil, “I will see to it that he makes a religion out of it.” Klyne Snodgrass,