Minor Prophets, Major Lessons: Malachi 2:10-3:5

Guard Yourselves: Faithful in What We Do and Say

This week I smashed my finger. We were moving the info desk in the lobby, it was about three or four inches off center, and I should have left it alone. I tried to push it while lifting the granite countertop, the countertop popped off, and my finger got crushed. When you get hurt like that, emotions well up, and they rarely help you think clearly. Have you ever kicked an object because you got hurt on it? The info desk did nothing to me. It was my fault, and I was not being wise. That is a silly illustration, but it is how we can approach God: “it can be our own unfaithfulness that leads to certain situations in our lives that are difficult and yet we blame God for the consequences of our own sinfulness or unfaithfulness.”

Malachi 2:10 through 3:5 contains two of the six disputes God’s people have with him. They are asking why God does what he does, and God answers. Here is the challenge: “how we view God changes what we do and it changes what we say.”

God’s People Must Live Faithful Lives

In verse 10 God asks, “have we not all one father?” and then calls his people faithless. They had a covenant with him and were not living it out. Malachi talks about worship because “our worship shows where our heart is and where our heart is affects our relationships.” Judah had profaned the sanctuary by marrying the daughter of a foreign god. God was not worried about ethnic backgrounds. He cared that his people were marrying those who did not worship the true God, and the New Testament still warns about being unequally yoked. They were mixing his worship with false worship, which is spiritual adultery, and it is not okay.

We do the same thing. We think of life as a pizza cut into slices, one for family, one for work, one for entertainment, and one for church. But Romans 12 says we worship by giving ourselves as living sacrifices. “Your whole life is worship if you are one of my people.”

When the people complained that God no longer accepted their offerings, God pointed to how they treated the wife of their youth. He was a witness to that covenant. Their life Monday through Saturday mattered, and “you can’t just live a certain way and then want to come and worship and everything be great.” Verse 16 says that breaking that union is like getting blood on your garments, and it does not wash out easily. So twice God says, “guard yourselves in your spirit.” We lock our doors at night because there is a potential for danger, and our flesh is still unfaithful.

The Solution Is Loving God More

The answer is not just trying harder. We love God because he first loved us, so “when we struggle to love other people it’s because we don’t understand how much God loves us.” We love God more by looking at who he is. After 50 years of marriage you trust your spouse more than after five months, and God has shown himself faithful over and over.

That trust looks different in different seasons. The single person who wants a spouse has to trust God’s provision, and the person in a hard marriage has to trust him enough to forgive. The widow can worship through loss, and the teenager can obey parents because God placed them there. Hebrews 11 shows what faithfulness is. “Do you know how you know if you’re being faithful to God you’re doing what he’s asked you to do.” Even Sarah, who did nothing, believed because “she considered him faithful who had promised.”

God’s People Must Speak Faithful Words

In verse 17 God says they have wearied him with words. They said everyone who does evil is good in God’s sight, and asked where the God of justice was. They looked at the nations around them and did not see God being just, because it was not in their timing. God answers that a messenger is coming, John the Baptist, and then the Lord himself. He is like a refiner’s fire, “like a refiner who takes out all the impurities of a precious metal that’s what God’s refining fire will be.”

A Judge and a Savior

The same God of justice is “also a god of Grace to those who receive his son Jesus Christ.” Second Corinthians 5:21 says he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. If you have been divorced or unfaithful and carry guilt and shame, our sins are washed as white as snow. “Maybe we can’t get the consequences and the blood and the stains from the garments that our sins created but he can.” But verse 5 says God draws near to his own people for judgment. We like to point at the sin out there, but “the sin out there does not affect you unless there’s sin in here.”