Mal 1:1,2 An oracle: The word of the LORD to Israel through Malachi. "I have loved you," says the LORD. "But you ask, `How have you loved us?'

Studying Malachi comes as a challenge. I don't think I would have written these meditations two years ago, but over the past two years I have come to realise something very clearly: God is a God of love (1 Jn 4:8,16) The apostle John declared what the rest of the Bible testifies to, that God is love. In Ex 34:6,7 the Lord reveals Himself: “the LORD, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin.” The truths there are reiterated again and again and again throughout the Old Testament and then the New. Many of us just don't notice them but they are there. Now if “God is love” as John testifies it means that everything about God is love. Everything He thinks is love, everything He says is love and everything He does is an expression of love.

Now this has certain consequences. The first is that we need to read the Bible through this filter, and that would be a major change for many of us. It means that we need to learn to view everything but everything that we read throughout the Bible from this perspective – that God is love. and that what we read about Him and His activities is an expression of love. Now what follows from this is that love can be expressed through a number of ways. Imagine a human father. He works long hours to provide for his family. That is sacrificial love. He comes home and romps around on the floor with his young children. That is intimate love. He sits quietly and listens to the complaints of his teenager and makes helpful comments. This is caring and wise love. He lays down house rules that will be kept. This is orderly love with authority. On rare occasion he will punish one or other of his children because he wants to stop a potentially harmful pattern of behaviour developing in them. This is the love of discipline. Sometimes he stands back and simply watches from a distance as his children struggle and this is the love that gives space to learn. Sometimes he hands over the keys of his car to his teenager. This is the love of respect and acknowledgement of maturity. These are ALL difference expressions of love, and we need to realise that even hard actions of God seen in the Bible ARE expressions of love.

Now I think it tends to be more of an American expression rather than a British one, but I am thinking of a father taking the son out to the woodshed where, traditionally, a beating would take place. Does the father love the son any the less because he is administering painful punishment? No, if anything it proves exactly the opposite. Because the father cares for the son, cares what will happen to him unless this wrong behaviour is corrected, he takes this painful action. Malachi has the feeling about it of a ‘trip to the woodshed'! The Lord is speaking to Israel because of what He starts out by saying: “I have loved you.”

Now the tense here is an ongoing one so it doesn't mean, “I loved you once in the distant past.” It actually means, “I have loved you always, right up to now.” The problem isn't with God's love; it is with Israel 's perception of Him, which we'll go on to see in the next meditation. Why is the Lord speaking words that, the more they go on, the more they make us feel defensive? The answer to that is because He wants to restore the relationship that they once had, and that needs action on Israel's part. The Lord has done everything He can and now it is Israel's turn to do something – but hold that before you; it is because He wants to restore the relationship between Himself and Israel.

Does the Lord want to punish them? Of course not! Does any father want to punish their child? Of course not, because on the negative side they don't want to risk the child moving even further from them, and on the positive side they would much rather the relationship was restored to what it was before there was any disharmony caused by the child's misbehaviour. What we have in Malachi is a simple list of things that Israel have done or are not doing that means the relationship has been broken, things which need remedial action. It is as simple as that!

Why, therefore, do so many of us feel so negative and defensive when we come to Malachi? Because guilt produces shame, fear and defensiveness. We don't like being confronted with our imperfections but such ‘imperfections' break down the relationship we have with the Lord. Indeed they may also be an indication of attitudes that have grown within us which go on to show that we have already moved away from the Lord. Remember, therefore, as we work our way through the verses to come, that this comes from a God of love who wants to reinstate a loving relationship between us. There is nothing onerous about being loved. It is not as if God is trying to reinstate an oppressive regime. No, He simply wants Israel to come back close to Him so that He can easily impart His blessing to them.

Mal 1:1,2 An oracle: The word of the LORD to Israel through Malachi. "I have loved you," says the LORD. "But you ask, `How have you loved us?'

Before we consider the other side of this particular coin, hold on to what we said in the first meditation. The starting point is that God DOES love Israel and DOES love you and me. His love, the Bible declares, is real and not under question, and yet a question is exactly what we now find here. In fact this little book is full of questions and they are questions about what God says, by the people.

Now a question of itself is neutral but what is important about it is the motivation behind it, the reason the person is asking the question. There are many questions in the Bible and sometimes they come from God questioning us, for example to Ezekiel: “Son of man, can these bones live?" (Ezek 37:3) and Ezekiel wisely responds, “O Sovereign LORD, you alone know.” Or His question to Elijah in the cave: “What are you doing here, Elijah?” (1 Kings 19:9) That wasn't such a comfortable question for He was confronting Elijah with the truth. Or there was Jesus' question of his disciples in the storm on the lake: “You of little faith, why are you so afraid?” (Mt 8:26) Again a challenging question, but when God asks questions of us it is to bring us into a right way of thinking and behaviour.

Our questions of God so often reveal a wrong way of thinking. When Zechariah questioned the angel, it obviously was not from a position of faith: “How can I be sure of this? I am an old man and my wife is well along in years.” (Lk 1:18) and he was going to be made to remember that for nine months! Occasionally there is a question that simply seeks out information: “a short while ago the Jews tried to stone you, and yet you are going back there?” (Jn 11:8) This was the disciples when Jesus was saying they would go south to raise Lazarus. It was a legitimate worry and they had yet to learn it was all very much part of God's plan.

Now in Malachi we find the Lord confronting the people with their question. They have come through the Exile and now Jerusalem is being re-established and they are becoming complacent. All is well again, we are back in our land again, relax. But they are not excited by who they are or, even more importantly, who the Lord is. They have lost perspective: being one of God's chosen people is nothing special. The Lord speaks to them: “I love you.” Their reply is tantamount to, “Oh yes?” They have lost perspective.

I believe in the West today, here in the Church, we are in a similar position. The truth is that atheism and materialism have made big strides and the committed Christian population is the minority. Yes, we have our religion, we have our Sunday Services and we even have our Alpha courses, and yet within many there appears to be little sense of the wonder of the Lord or of the excitement of being a Christian. Indeed Jesus' words to the Laodicean church may ring true: “I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot….You say, `I am rich; I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing.' But you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked.” ( Rev 3:15 ,17) We're not actually cold but neither are we hot. We are not what we should be and so the Lord says, “I love you,” and we reply half-heartedly, “Well, yes, I suppose so,” with the implication we're not sure of that.

We allow circumstances to determine the truth and not the truth to change the circumstances. Things go wrong and we don't seem to see the Lord coming to help and so we question, “How do you love us?” We expect more but aren't really concerned to cry for it. We are complacent. When you lose a job, the children get into trouble, your partner leaves you, you have an accident or you get seriously ill, it is easy to lose perspective. Gideon was a classic example of this, for when the angel of the Lord came to him and said, “The LORD is with you, mighty warrior,” (Jud 6:12 ) Gideon's response was, “But sir, if the LORD is with us, why has all this happened to us? Where are all his wonders that our fathers told us about.” The circumstances didn't match the thought of God being with them.

But is that true of you and me? In a measure, yes, for surely the Lord wants to manifest His presence through His church far more, but actually most of us are really blessed. It is our affluence (the fruit of God's blessing) that puts us to sleep spiritually. The Lord is going to speak to Israel through Malachi to show ways that He has revealed His love. Does He need to do that again for us? Stop and think about the Gospel, stop and think about the goodness of His provision for us in so many ways, and then praise and worship Him and don't dare say, “How have you loved us?”

Mal 1:2,3 "Was not Esau Jacob's brother?" the LORD says. "Yet I have loved Jacob, but Esau I have hated, and I have turned his mountains into a wasteland and left his inheritance to the desert jackals."

How have you loved us, was the question of Israel of God, so now the Lord gives an answer. He could have simply said, “I blessed you in so many ways” and that would have been true. Some of the psalms, for example, testify to all the things the Lord had done for Israel. They were a truly blessed people. But instead of that, the Lord goes right back to the heart of who they were and sets up a comparison. It is the comparison of Jacob and Esau. Now of course they are descendents of Jacob (Israel) but that, when you think about it was quite surprising.

To understand this we have to go right back to the story of the birth of these twins. They were the result of twenty years of praying by Isaac for children for his wife Rebekah. While she was still waiting for them she had sought the Lord and He had told her, “Two nations are in your womb, and two peoples from within you will be separated; one people will be stronger than the other, and the older will serve the younger.” (Gen 25:23) That was even before they were born. Esau was the first to be born and Jacob followed quickly clutching one of Esau's feet. Now in your Bible you will probably find a footnote that says, “Esau may mean hairy; he was also called Edom, which means red” and another one that says, “Jacob means he grasps the heel (figuratively, he deceives)” Yes, Jacob was called schemer, deceiver, twister, simply because he had come out grasping Esau's heel, and that is what he became. Was it a case of living up to parental expectations, I wonder, because that wasn't God's intent for Jacob.

Now God's word had been, “the older will serve the younger.” Esau was the older and Jacob the younger. Now this raises a number of questions. First of all does it mean that God MADE Esau to be like he was and Jacob like he was? Did God FORCE Esau to submit to Jacob? Now I think we have to be careful in our answer because undoubtedly God is sovereign and He can decide what will happen, but when you place that alongside the fact that He clearly does give us free will, I would suggest that He always knows the future because in one sense He stands outside of time and sees everything that happens in time from above, so to speak.

So what does this leave us with? I believe it leaves us with the fact that even before they were born God knew what they would each be like and on the basis of what He knew they would be like, He chose to work with Jacob; He knew what He could do with Jacob, He knew that even though Jacob started out almost cursed by his parents with that name, and knew that he would be that sort of man, eventually Jacob would be someone who sought the Lord, found Him and responded to Him – and that of course is what happened. Did it have to happen? No, that's not the point. The Lord knew that it would happen because in advance He saw how the boys would grow up and the sort of men they would become.

But both boys are sinners, they are part of the human race, so why did God decide to work with Jacob and not with Esau? One answer is that He is God and He chooses who He will (Rom 9:10-13), but the Bible also shows us that God is wise and so He knows who He can best work with, I believe.

There is a mystery in the midst of this for the Bible suggests that God has a hand in the conception and birth of each of us so how much does He do? That is the mystery and how He does it is a mystery. Of course today we know all about nature versus nurture so we know that part of who we are is genetic – we are what we are because we've inherited parts of our parents. We're also part of what we are because of the way we have been brought up and because of our unique experiences of the world. Yet we're also part of what we are because of the choices we make every day of our lives – that is our sovereign free will. And we are part of what we are because of God's input into our lives and that tends to be the mystery.

So God sees and God knows and on the basis of that, God chooses one and not the other. Why did He reject Esau and what does it mean that God ‘hated' him? We'll see in the next meditation.

Mal 1:2,3 "Was not Esau Jacob's brother?" the LORD says. "Yet I have loved Jacob, but Esau I have hated, and I have turned his mountains into a wasteland and left his inheritance to the desert jackals."

So we started thinking about the fact that the Lord had chosen Jacob but not Esau and suggested that he did that because He knew what both boys would grow up to be and, more importantly, what they could become. We need to avoid the suggestion that God chose us because we were good. Neither Jacob nor Esau were good, far from it in fact. No, what I have been suggesting is that what is crucial is what we can become. However that theory sometimes has flaws in it. For example Solomon started off very well but ended up drifting away from the Lord, having allowed himself to be so led by his many foreign wives, and there are others who start well but finish badly. What might help our theory is that these kings were not chosen in the same way as we have been considering; they just happened to be next in line for the throne.

Now we do need to pick up on this word ‘hated'. In the original, I am told, it actually means ‘less loved'. Also in that language they tended to use extreme opposites to make a point. We find a similar usage of this idea when Jesus said, “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters--yes, even his own life--he cannot be my disciple.” (Lk 14:26) Now to hate your parents was clearly against the rest of Jesus' teaching where he clearly taught about honouring and respecting your parents. No, here again we have that style of speaking that uses an extreme to make a point. What he was saying was that if our love for Jesus isn't so strong that it makes our love for our parents almost look like hatred by comparison, then it is not enough.

So did God really hate Esau? No, because if He had found something about Esau so terrible that it constituted hatred even in a heart of love, He would have destroyed him. Now we may look at Esau and see that he despised his birthright and cared more about himself than about the family name – and that was important in those days – but even that is not a sin that takes him outside God's reach, and so he grew up to become another nation, Edom (Gen 36:9, 43).

However, when we consider the history of the Edomites, we se they were clearly enemies of Israel. For example David fought against them (2 Sam 8:13) and generally they were against Israel (2 Kings 8:21,22). Another example was that of Amaziah who fought against them and killed large numbers of them (2 Kings 14:7). As we progress in the next meditation we will see even more of this.

However, for the moment, we focus on the fact that the Lord is saying to Israel, “Look when it came to your origins in Jacob and Esau, it wasn't Esau I chose but you – YOU are the chosen people and therefore when you look back at your history you will find that your history is one of favour and blessing from me, but Edom (other name for Esau) wasn't. (As we said, more on that in the next meditation). But Israel, you need to realise that you HAVE been blessed and that was because I loved you. If I had loved you less, or even hated you, you would have been in serious trouble, as Edom so often was – but you weren't.

If you are a Christian and you sometimes find yourself taking your inheritance as a Christian for granted, ask the Lord to open your eyes to see the real state of your non-Christian neighbours. Just recently I was talking with a non-Christian and sharing our different life stories. I simply shared mine without including details of my conversion or anything spiritual, so it was purely my ‘ordinary life' that was being revealed. They shared their life and then said, “You seem to have had a life that has been so good and in comparison mine has been a mess.” That is the truth of it. I did go on to share my faith and now the other person was beginning to understand that what I might now refer to as the ‘blessings of my life' are all actually because I am a Christian and I live according to God's way and receive God's blessing. That IS how it is, and so often we take for granted the blessing of God on our lives. It is only when we look at others sometimes, do we realise the difference. THAT is what is behind the Lord's words here.

Mal 1:2,3 "Was not Esau Jacob's brother?" the LORD says. "Yet I have loved Jacob, but Esau I have hated, and I have turned his mountains into a wasteland and left his inheritance to the desert jackals."

There is yet another way of viewing this concept of the Lord ‘hating' Esau. We have considered the fact of God who knows how we will each develop and what we are capable of, our potential, and so the Lord knew the sort of negative person so set in his ways that Esau would become, while Jacob, twister and schemer that he was, actually had a flexibility whereby he could learn and eventually change. That is one aspect of this.

The other aspect or way of thinking that we considered is the linguistic and cultural characteristics of the Hebrew language where exaggeration is used to make a point. We actually do a similar thing when in an argument one person might say, “You'll have me arguing that black is white next.” Well no he won't; it is exaggeration to point out the direction of the argument. It isn't going to go that far but it looks like it will. And so this is an exaggeration to mean that one was loved much more than the other.

But now we must recognise something else which often (and we do mean, often) crops up in the Old Testament, and that is the Lord's use of an individual's name to mean a corporate group, or the nation. Very often you will find Him speaking in prophecy of Israel as Jacob. If it was just ‘Israel' that could mean the man or the nation for both had the same name, but in prophecy when He is clearly referring to the nation, the Lord calls them Jacob and in so doing reminds them of their lowly beginning, from a man who was a twister and therefore of their tendency to be the same so often.

Now the same thing applies to Esau. His family also developed and became the nation of Edom and, as we noted previously, were a nation that was constantly against Israel. Jeremiah prophesied against them (Jer 49:7-) specifically calling them Esau and prophesied disaster because of their pride (Jer 49:16) and the terror they brought to surrounding peoples as they came down from their mountain fortresses causing havoc. Similarly Ezekiel prophesied against them for having taken revenge on Judah (Ezek 25:12,13) and Obadiah testifies to the same thing as they joined in with the Babylonians to destroy Jerusalem ( Ob 1-14).

Now we also need to observe the tenses used in our present verses. “I have loved Jacob” means I have loved them right up to this minute. “I have hated Esau” means I have hated them right up to this minute. When we consider what he then goes on to say, we realise that this is all about corporate or national guilt, not just about the original man. There is the same echo in the following words as found in many of the other prophetic books about Edom : “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.” (v.4) and he goes on, “They will be called the Wicked Land , a people always under the wrath of the LORD. You will see it with your own eyes and say, `Great is the LORD--even beyond the borders of Israel!” (v.4,5) Rather like Pharaoh prior to the Exodus when the Lord declared of Pharaoh, “by now I could have stretched out my hand and struck you and your people with a plague that would have wiped you off the earth. But I have raised you up A for this very purpose, that I might show you my power and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth. You still set yourself against my people and will not let them go.” (Ex 9:15 -17) i.e. because you such a stiff necked person I have chosen you to demonstrate to the world, my grace, my power and my judgment on you.

For Edom now, the same things was true. As a people, they had been as their originator, Esau, careless of God, proud, arrogant with no concern for life. Perhaps we need to consider the reality of a genuine and legitimate hatred. The Lord clearly hated various things: “You must not worship the LORD your God in their way, because in worshiping their gods, they do all kinds of detestable things the LORD hates.” (Deut 12:31) Similarly, “The LORD examines the righteous, but the wicked and those who love violence his soul hates.” (Psa 11:5) Also note, “There are six things the LORD hates, seven that are detestable to him: haughty eyes, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked schemes, feet that are quick to rush into evil, a false witness who pours out lies and a man who stirs up dissension among brothers.” (Prov 6:16-19).

Now here is something to think about: hatred of evil is not the opposite of love, it is an expression of love. Ongoing, steadfast, immovable evil – such as we saw in Pharaoh and we see in the history of Edom – is destructive and opposed to all good. It is vile, it is horrible, it is detestable, and if we cannot see that, it says that modern ways of thinking have blinded us. So maybe, as scholars suggest, it does mean “love less” but actually, perhaps it does mean hate and detest for it is horrible, and where behaviour is so set or ingrained in a person, you cannot, tragically separate the person from the act, and both person and act become objects of our revulsion (or they should be!). This is not to say we don't anguish for the person and yearn for them to change, and if they did we would instantly welcome them with open arms, but as they are at the moment, it is impossible to separate man from action. There are probably not many people you can say that about, but of Pharaoh and Edom it was true.

So Israel, see the contrast in the histories of you both, and realise you have been on the receiving end of God's goodness and love down through the centuries. Edom (Esau) set in their ways, have received judgment. You, Israel, ARE loved!

Mal 1:6 "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."

At the beginning of this series I said I wanted to meditate on its contents while keeping in mind the teaching of the Bible that “God is love”. E-mails are notorious for conveying information but the sense or feeling behind the mail being missed. I believe the same can be said about the Bible. We read things through the filter of our experience. If we have had trouble in life, a painful upbringing and been part of a legalistic church, we will view such words as those in our verse today as harsh chiding but actually it is possible to see them quite differently. I have recently done a study in Jeremiah to see the number of times the Lord warned Judah and Jerusalem through Jeremiah before He destroyed Jerusalem and took them into exile. It is an incredible number. This is the Lord who pleads and pleads with His people to turn away from destruction.

Now I have to insert a health warning, or a warning about understanding. In what is to come I am aware that I am going to go behind the words in the book and look at the wider picture of what the Bible reveals about God and am then going to apply that here. This means that quite often I am going to infer things about God that are beyond the basic text, but that will, I hope, always be in line with the rest of Scripture. Thus the rest of Scripture will shine light on possibly difficult words to give greater understanding.

What is amazing about our verse today is that it is there! This is the Lord reasoning with His people. He is seeking to get them to change their minds and He does it by reason. He could have simply said, ‘I am judging you and you deserve to die', but He doesn't! This little book is filled with reasoned argument after reasoned argument that seeks to turn the people's hearts by logical reasoning. The Lord doesn't want to judge them again. They have only recently been through the biggest disciplinary judgment in their history. He doesn't want to have to do that yet again. And so we find Him appealing to their common sense, almost.

Look, He says, think about this. In the world about you there are certain things that you take for granted. For instance, there is family life. It has order and you expect that – that a son should respect and honour his father. You have no problem with that idea. You expect it to be like that because the father is older and wiser than his son. Or, if you like, think of business life where you have masters and servants. There is a natural order here. You don't expect the servant to be the leader; no, it should be the master, the one with the money, power, influence and position. To expect it to be the other way round would be stupid.

Now if it is like that in your world, why isn't it like that with me? Down through the centuries have I not revealed much about myself to you, so that you know things about me? Have you not realised that I am your father, the one who brought you into being from the beginning? And, even more, have you not realised that I also hold the role of a master, a leader, the powerful one in this relationship? Look back on your history; isn't this how it has been? Now if that is so, why are you not honouring me in the same way you say it is right for a son to honour his father, or a servant to honour his master? Do you not realise what has happened? You have lost perspective! You have forgotten the many things that I have done for you down through the centuries, the things recorded in the scrolls of the books, and having forgotten, you have forgotten me and who I am.

Does such a gentle reminder need to come to us on days when we have tended to forget the wonders of our salvation and have failed to worship the One who has made all things, and who has sent His Son to die for us, and who has given us His own Holy Spirit and provided a place in heaven for us in eternity? How easy it is to let the things of the world crowd into our minds and to give little or no space to God. How easy it is to cease to be a praising and worshipping person, and yet the truth is that if we do become like that, it means that we too have lost perspective.

A right perspective is regained when we think on who God is and what He has done. If we reflect on the truth relayed through the Bible to us about God's greatness, we will cease to be the centre of our lives. When we realise afresh His greatness and His power and His wisdom and His love, we cannot fail to be a worshipper. Moreover when we stop and think and reflect on what He has done for us we cannot fail to be a thankful, praising person.

This is the message behind these opening words of this little book. They challenge us to check our own perspective and remember what we know, what we have been told about Him, what we have learnt about His greatness, and when we do that we will find our emotions stirred and we will find we use our lips for a different purpose. When we regain a right perspective, everything else will change as well. May it be so!

Mal 1:6 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?'

Sometimes in the apostle Paul's writings in the New Testament, we find a logical form of writing whereby he pastes one fact on top of another in a stream of logical thinking. When you read Malachi, you realise that this is God's approach. If the Lord has to tell us off about something, it is rarely one thing! Failures or sins are gregarious – they like company. David sinned by lusting after Bathsheba and from that initial look followed a number of other sins. When we have sinned by a wrong attitude, it will almost certainly have been expressed by wrong words and eventually by wrong actions. One thing follows another, and so it is within Malachi.

It starts with the big assertion from the Lord, “I have loved you” but that only produced a question in the people: “How?” The answer given could be summarised, “I chose you and blessed you, and if you aren't sure, look at what happened to the one I didn't bless.” But then the Lord continued His assessment of Israel : “You lost focus and no longer realise who I am, and now, as a result of that, you are holding me in contempt.” “What,” they reply, “how are we holding you in contempt?”

Now before we move on to see the Lord's answer, we need here to pause and notice in more detail just what is going on. Again and again Israel, in their answers, are expressing their ignorance or their blindness. Can you see this? At this point they are asking how are they being contemptuous. They are unable to see that what they are doing is holding the Lord in contempt. Prior to that they had expressed their ignorance or blindness by asking how had God loved them.

Whenever I am being questioned by people criticising the Bible, God or the Christian Faith, I witness this same ignorance or blindness. How had God loved them? Look at the evidence of history – we've got a book full of it! Think about it because there is so much of it. Take away twenty per cent say, and you've still got an immense volume of testimony to the love and goodness of God. Stop and think about how the Bible came into being, check out the safety factors that ensured its accuracy and you will realise that you can trust what you find there. Think about why so many people would have written in the same vein if it wasn't true? Why would they bothered to have writen? What was in it for them? No, the evidence pours in from every direction when you start studying these things, but there is the problem: so many of these atheists have never bothered to study either how the Bible came into being, or what is actually in it. It is patently clear from reading such modern atheists – Bertrand Russell, Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens – that each of these men are woefully ignorant of what is in the Bible.

But isn't this just what happens when a person sets their face against God? They determine to remain in ignorance and remain blind to the truth. It needs a prophet like Malachi to come along and upset their casual indifference. He brings the challenges from God and he foresees the questions they ask in their ignorance and blindness. He's about to reveal something else that is going on that shows further this casual indifference that is prevailing, and what is worse, it is in the priesthood, the people who were supposed to be alert to the Lord, the people who were supposed to be bringing the nation to God. These are the very people who are displaying this ignorance and this blindness by their counter questions.

I have a memory of an early TV crime series where a criminal was being challenged by the new detective hero, and his words have stayed on in my memory: “Who me?” The criminal was almost looking hurt, as if he should be thought to have done the things of which he was being accused – but he was guilty. When we have eased away from a living and genuine relationship with the Lord, a blindness settles on us and when we are challenged, we reply, “Who me?” Surely not, is the implication. But how many of us, I wonder, actually question God's love or have given up on his presence and hold the same attitude as Gideon – well I don't know where God is; it's obvious by what is going on that He's not here. We fail to see that, in fact, God is working in our present circumstances.

If our love has grown lukewarm then the words of Jesus to the church in Laodicea still apply to us: “I counsel you to buy from me ….salve to put on your eyes, so you can see.” (Rev 3:18) Malachi was bringing a call to Israel that said, “Guys, please wake up! Please see what is going on, please realise the state of the nation and the state of the church. Wake up!”

Mal 1:6-8 "But you ask, `How have we shown contempt for your name?' "You place defiled food on my altar. "But you ask, `How have we defiled you?' "By saying that the LORD's table is contemptible. 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.

We are complete beings. We are not made up of separate bits – body, soul and spirit. We are not made up of different parts of our character. If you lie to one person, you are a liar. If you are weak in one area of life, it isn't a great leap to being weak in others areas. When you lose perspective of God and start to wonder about His love for you, it's not a great leap to disrespecting Him generally and if you don't respect Him and you remain a religious person, very soon your religious acts are basics, the least you can do to remain religious. If there are things we know the Christian community consider sin, we see how close we can get without actually sinning.

Reading Malachi is like going to the doctor's for a check-up. Your doctor doesn't just look at you and say, “You look good, fine.” No, he takes your blood pressure, he makes you exercise and listens to your breathing, he checks your cholesterol, he may check you for diabetes and who knows what else. One part of you not functioning properly means all of you not functioning properly. It starts with our general attitude towards God. If we are less that one hundred per cent committed to him, then we are vulnerable in a whole variety of ways.

The Jews of Malachi's day were still religious. They had rebuilt the Temple and now they still brought offerings to be sacrificed on the altar there, but they weren't whole hearted about it. They had become half-hearted in respect of God so, yes, they would carry on making a pretence of following the Law but it wasn't quite what the Law expected.

The Law said bring animals as offerings, so they brought animals – begrudgingly. When it came to choosing an animal to be taken to be sacrificed, they rationalised their thinking. “Surely God won't mind if I don't take the best. After all He wants the best for me, doesn't He, so He won't mind if I don't send the best. After all, I am still sending an offering.” And so they picked out an animal that was blind or crippled or diseased and sent that. It was still an animal, wasn't it.

But the only problem with that was that it went against what the Law said: “If an animal has a defect, is lame or blind, or has any serious flaw, you must not sacrifice it to the LORD your God.” (Deut 15:21) and “you must present a male without defect from the cattle, sheep or goats in order that it may be accepted on your behalf. Do not bring anything with a defect, because it will not be accepted on your behalf. When anyone brings from the herd or flock a fellowship offering to the LORD to fulfill a special vow or as a freewill offering, it must be without defect or blemish to be acceptable. Do not offer to the LORD the blind, the injured or the maimed, or anything with warts or festering or running sores.” (Lev 22:19 -22) That was very clear wasn't it! Again and again the Law said the animal was to be “without blemish” and again and again it said you must not give damaged animals. The quality of the offering reflected the quality of the man's heart presenting it. A perfect offering, the best from the flock or herd, said that this person was being utterly whole-hearted towards God.

The word the Lord uses to describe this sort of offering is ‘defiled'. If you defile something you make it dirty or unclean or polluted. These offerings were polluted with bad attitudes. The animal itself was neutral. What was important was the way someone brought it. If you come in awe with reverence for God, the offering is holy. If you come half-heartedly, treating God with disdain, it is dirtied or sullied with bad attitudes. It is the motivation or attitudes behind our actions that make them worthy or otherwise.

This is still true today in respect of anything we do with God. If we give him two minutes of prayer and a brief reading of someone else's Bible notes in the morning as we rush off to work after laying in bed for a few extra minutes, God still loves us, but it questions the quality of our love for Him. The same applies to every spiritual action. Are we working on the bare minimum? If we are we should be facing our half-hearted devotion to God and doing something about it.

Mal 1:8,9 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. "Now implore God to be gracious to us. With such offerings from your hands, will he accept you?"--says the LORD Almighty.

There is a film about marriage relationships called ‘Fireproof'. In it a marriage of a fire fighter is almost at an end, largely by his own making and disregard for his wife. Receiving counsel from his father, the husband tries to rescue the marriage by entering into forty days of exercises to help win back his wife. Unfortunately for the first part of these exercises his heart is not in it. On one day the exercise requires him to buy some flowers for his wife. The ensuing pot of flowers that appears on the kitchen table can only be described as bedraggled and cheap! This was supposed to be an offering that won the heart of his wife again, but instead it conveyed to her that he didn't value her. Later in the film, when his attitude changes and he starts to get his act together, a wonderful bunch of red roses appears. This is how it was supposed to be.

Such an illustration fits what is going on here with Israel. Sometimes when you have time, scan back through the historical books of the Old Testament and see how kings behaved who were bringing Israel back to the Lord. There is all out, wholehearted worship seen in the form of incredible offerings being brought to the Lord. How different from what is happening here now. Complacency and indifference are words that now apply to Israel 's attitude towards the Lord and towards worship.

The prophet continues to reason with Israel, he continues to try and get them to think about what they are doing and to realise how bad it is. He starts with this simple but obvious question: “When you sacrifice crippled or diseased animals, is that not wrong?” i.e. surely you know that the Law says you must not offer ‘damaged goods'? To press home the point, imagine it is your twenty fifth wedding anniversary and you buy your partner a cheap card and buy them something clearly second hand from a charity shop. For a time that is supposed to be a celebration of good years and a restatement of your love for your partner, isn't that sort of response wrong?

Yes, it's wrong. A card that has been carefully chosen (or even made) and a present that has been thoughtfully bought with little thought about cost, those are the ‘right' things, the more appropriate things. Anything less says this marriage is almost dead and that, tragically, is what is being conveyed here by Israel. Malachi is the Lord calling Israel back into a meaningful relationship not one that is blemished, damaged and almost at its end! But the Lord will not let Israel be ended; He still has plans for them and He's going to persevere with them. That is what this is all about. They may be half-hearted but He isn't!

He continues to reason with them: “Try offering them to your governor. Would he be pleased with you?” The Eastern tradition was to bring a present to the governor when you went to see him. Actually we do similar things when we go to visit someone to stay or to go to a party; we take along something as a small token of our appreciation at having been invited. So, says the Lord, think about this, think about what you are doing. Would you take the animals you are presenting to me on my altar and present them to the governor if you were going to visit him? What do you think he would feel about them? What do you think he would feel about you offloading the worst animals from your flocks or herds? It would virtually be an insult! Are you getting the message yet? What sort of relationship do we really have?

So OK, continues the prophet, "Now implore God to be gracious to us.” You want to ask God for His blessing on the nation? Is that how you go about it? “With such offerings from your hands, will he accept you?"--says the LORD Almighty.” Really and truly Israel, you want God to be gracious to you, you expect Him to do good to you, and you turn up behaving like this? Don't you see how your behaviour comes over? Don't you see what it says about your attitude towards Him?

But are we much better? I heard a church leader say recently that they were grateful if they could get their congregation to turn up twice a month. Wow! What does that say about those people? I can remember when Christians went to church twice on Sunday and at least a couple of times during the week. Now meetings aren't everything and you can have meetings galore and still have an inadequate relationship with the Lord, but it seems that over the past thirty years Christians have been showing less and less inclination to gather together to express their worship of the Lord. Having visited a variety of local churches in recent days, that does not surprise me for so often what we call ‘a church service' is simply a routine of words and songs with very little space for the Lord to express Himself and move and do things. I have a feeling that Malachi's words very much apply to much of the church today. We need to repent and cry out to the Lord for His help, but first we must stop offering second hand or damaged goods, half-hearted expressions of a half-hearted love.

Mal 1:10 "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.

I was amazed when I first studied the Law – well no perplexed first, actually. Why were those long dreary chapters at the beginning of Leviticus about different sorts of offerings, and why were there those tedious chapters in the latter part of Exodus about the Tabernacle and the priests? None of it seemed relevant to today, so why was it there, and then eventually I understood. This was the Lord recognising that His people would get it wrong so that they would feel guilty and then feel at a distance from the Lord, this was the Lord making a way back for such people. This was also the Lord making provision for those whose hearts might overflow with love for God who just wanted to bring Him a gift.

That was what all those laws were about, about regulating how those things might happen through the sacrifices. That was what the Tabernacle and then later the Temple were about. They were places of focus on the Lord, places where the Lord initially made His presence known, places that He filled with His glory, places of fellowship with God and places of reconciliation with God and restoration of a relationship with the Lord. That was what the Temple was all about. It was for the people to come and do two things: offer sacrifices and pray (remember Jesus called it a house of prayer). The Tabernacle and then the Temple were all about relationship with the Lord which is why, when the Temple was destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar's army in 587BC, it was so devastating for Israel. When Jeremiah spoke about restoration after seventy years, that seventy years was the period between the destruction of the Temple and the completion of its rebuilding, exactly seventy years!

But God isn't fooled by play acting. That had been going on before the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple by Nebuchadnezzar and Jeremiah parodied their reliance upon the presence of the Temple (Jer 7). Now the same thing was happening again. The apostle Paul prophesied about the last days: “There will be terrible times in the last days. People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God-- having a form of godliness but denying its power.” (2 Tim 3:1-5) There is the same thing: there will be a form of religion (godliness) while all the time men and woman are living lives that are very different from God's design for them.

The people of Malachi's day were declaring that they were godly because they were performing religious acts and then comes this terrible word of judgment through Malachi: “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.” Shut down all this religious nonsense, is what the Lord is saying, for that is actually what it is – religious nonsense! Did God want His people to perform religious acts in the Temple with no meaning behind them? No! God's intent had been to provide channels for blessing Israel, for making ways back to Him and for legitimizing their gifts to Him. The Temple was for prayer and worship and reconciliation and those things, to be genuine, have to come out of wholeheartedness.

The Lord is concerned more what goes on inside a person than the things they do outwardly. Outward acts can be pure pretense. In medical terms, sometimes people come out in a skin rash and it is a sign of tension or stress within. It is the reality of the inner life that God is concerned with, not the charades that people put on. Who are they kidding? Do they think they will make God think well of them? Does “going to church on a Sunday morning” make God feel good about us? No, it should be an expression of the love we have for Him on the inside.

Around the world, often the churches with the greatest reality are those in countries where the church is persecuted and driven underground. When those people gather together under threat of arrest, there is a reality and a depth of love not found in the West. How tragic it is that our love is only proved real when it is challenged! When will we come to our senses and call out to the Lord for a reality of relationship? Will the Lord have to shut our churches down before that has to happen? May it not have to be so!

Mal 1:11 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.

If we have wondered why God has been so concerned to get Israel back on track, the reason is now given. The key words in this verse are “among the nations”. This is ultimately God's plan, that the WHOLE world knows about Him. One of the primary expressions of sin is godlessness and when we are godless we stray from God's design for us and our behaviour soon becomes what the Bible simply calls, ‘unrighteous'. Unrighteous or unrighteousness simply means, ‘no longer right'. Righteousness means right behaviour and right living in accord with God's design for us. Now because sin entered the word through Adam and Eve, the whole world is tainted with this tendency towards godlessness and unrighteousness. To draw us back into the blessing of His original design for mankind, the Lord has first to draw us back to Himself.

And that was the point of His entering into a relationship with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and then the nation of Israel. His objective was that through Israel the world would see and know that there is a God of goodness and love, a Creator who made all things for our blessing, and a God who works to draw us back into relationship with Himself, so we can enter in again and experience the design for living that He had originally made.

Initially it was through His promises to Abram that this was made clear: “I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and  all peoples on earth will be blessed through you." (Gen 12:2,3) That promise was repeated at least three times to Abram and then to Isaac (Gen 26:2-4) and then to Jacob (Gen 28:13,14). Moses also became aware of what the other nations of the world would think of them (Num 14:13-17 and Deut 2:24 ,25, 4:5,6, 28:8-10). Joshua also realised it (Josh 4:23 ,24). King David was aware of it (1 Chron 16:8,24, Psa 57:9 and many other psalms) and also King Solomon (1 Kings 4:29-34. 8:41-43, 59-61. 9:6,7) and so on throughout the whole of the Old Testament.

We must be quite clear about this: Israel were to be a light to the Gentiles. They were to reveal God and His ways to the rest of the world. Through them they were to show the rest of the world what God was like. Did that happen? On rare occasions! The classic one was Solomon with the Queen of Sheba: When the queen of Sheba heard about the fame of Solomon and his relation to the name of the LORD, she came to test him with hard questions… When the queen of Sheba saw all the wisdom of Solomon and the palace he had built, the food on his table, the seating of his officials, the attending servants in their robes, his cupbearers, and the burnt offerings he made at the temple of the LORD, she was overwhelmed. …… happy your men must be! How happy your officials, who continually stand before you and hear your wisdom! Praise be to the LORD your God, who has delighted in you and placed you on the throne of   Israel . Because of the LORD's eternal love for Israel, he has made you king, to maintain justice and righteousness." (1 Kings 10:1-10) She saw and understood!

But God is not put off by the sinfulness of Israel. Our verse today comes as a statement of fact, of what WILL be. It will be because of His Son, Jesus Christ, because of the Gospel and maybe, yet because of Israel itself. Of Jesus, the apostle Paul spoke: “Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” (Phil 2:9-11) One way or another, every knee IS going to bow before Jesus. It may be when people die and have to face him in all his glory, or it may be at the end when he returns as a conquering king (Rev 19:11 -18)

So why does God make this declaration here? We suggest it is to remind Israel that this is what His goal is and they can either return to Him and be part of it, or fall away and be lost. It is their choice. He will bring this about as an end, so why be foolish and not be part of it?

Mal 1:12-14 "But you profane it by saying of the Lord's table, `It is defiled,' and of its food, `It is contemptible.' 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. "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

Have you ever noticed sometimes when you try to convince someone of something they seem very slow to accept it and you need to reiterate your argument again and again. Israel are being slow to respond and the prophet, as God's mouthpiece, senses this and so the same prophetic word comes again. Can we realise that this is the Lord's grace. He could have simply given up on them but He won't do that, and so He keeps on seeking to get them to face up to what they are doing so that they will come through to a place of repentance and return to Him.

He confronts again their whole attitude about worship in the Temple. Remember what we have said before: the regulations for worship in the Temple were primarily providing a ‘tangible' means for the people to approach God and draw near to Him, and especially when they had sinned. A large part of the sacrifices were to enable the people to return to God in repentance when they had sinned. Failure did not exclude them from God's presence. There was a way back when they repented. The regulations were there to enable that to happen, but it was in the way that God had prescribed through Moses when He gave the Law.

But now the Lord confronts their attitudes. Of the altar of sacrifice He says, “But you profane it….” When you profane something you abuse it, you demean it, you make it something less than it is, and you make it ordinary. When someone swears using God's name, we speak of their ‘profanity'. They are demeaning the Lord, making Him someone less than He truly is. So they are demeaning the altar. How? Answer: “by saying of the Lord's table, `It is defiled,'” When you defile something you make it dirty, impure, less than good. They were like the modern day atheists who decry Jesus dying on the Cross and who decry the whole sacrificial system. All this talk about blood turns them off. They fail to see its significance and so say how horrible it is. But it wasn't only the act of sacrificial worship, it was the death of the sacrifices. Of that they said, “It is contemptible.” If something is contemptible it is worthy of scorn, worthless, despicable. Thus in their thinking they were writing off the reason for the sacrifices and the whole sacrificial system in the Law. They did not realise what it was all about.

So when it came to it, they did it with a begrudging heart. There were times laid down in the Law when freewill offerings were to be brought, simply to acknowledge the Lord's goodness, apart from the sacrifices acknowledging repentance. In respect of the whole thing about bringing sacrifices and offerings they felt, “What a burden!” and they felt contemptuous about the whole thing. They had lost the meaning of the whole thing and in their thinking had become godless and self-centred. Offering sacrifices and offerings had become a meaningless procedure and when something becomes that, you try to minimize, you try to do it as quickly as possible and with as little fuss as possible and with as little cost as possible.

Thus He reminds them again that in fact what they are bringing are “injured, crippled or diseased animals,” and the person who vows to bring a good sacrifice, but instead brings the worst in the flock, is a cheat. Now comes the climax which should not have needed to have been said, but they have become so complacent and have so lost perspective that it does: “I am a great king and my name is to be feared among the nations.” There are two things there. First, the Lord's greatness. You do NOT treat royalty like that! Second, His ultimate intent: that the rest of the world will ultimately come to realise who He is through Israel. That is the primary reason that the Lord is taking Israel through this ‘health check' through Malachi, because they are supposed to be revealing the Lord to the rest of the world.

We need to make this personal. Do we understand the need and value of the sacrificial system in the Law for Israel? Do we realise it was primarily God's way of making a way for Israel back to Him when they sinned? Do we realise the absolute necessity for the Son of God to die and take our sins? Do we understand that without the Cross we would be utterly lost? Do we realise that we are to be His people revealing Him to the world so that they will see who we are and through us realise who He is?