Mal 2:1-2 "And now this admonition is for you, O priests. If you do not listen, and if you do not set your heart to honor my name," says the LORD Almighty, "I will send a curse upon you, and I will curse your blessings. Yes, I have already cursed them, because you have not set your heart to honor me.

Remember throughout that the Lord's objective is to bring His people back to Him. When a father sees his children doing something incredibly dangerous, life threatening perhaps, he speaks to them in terms that are serious – to match the seriousness of what they are doing. They may be words of strong correction, words of strong discipline, words that produce concern (at the least) in the children. His objective, one way or another, is to save the lives of his children! Bear that in mind when we hear the words of the Lord here. They come from a heart of love but they also come with the knowledge that unless this situation is remedied, their very existence could be under threat.

So now He speaks directly to the priests. What came before seems to have been a general challenge but now He speaks to those who should have the most influence in the nation. These priests are those whose calling has been to present the people to God. That was who they were. If they didn't do that they had no other calling in life. In a sense, if you are trying to deal with a group of children and bring correction, you start on the ring leaders, the ones with the most influence in the group. The priests are such people. He has already spoken and so they should have heard and responded to what He has said but “If you do not listen, and if you do not set your heart to honor my name…..," He starts out. You have been chided already for questioning my love, but actually now I'm holding YOU accountable for not listening to me and not responding to me. You above all people in this nation should be responding. I am the very reason for your existence.

So now comes the warning: “I will send a curse upon you, and I will curse your blessings.” Now the priests were also the keepers of the Law – or at least they were supposed to be. They would have understood the enormity of what was now being said. Back in the Law, in Deuteronomy 29 there had been a clarification of good versus evil. Good, described as blessings, were what God would bring on His people when they lived out the relationship with Him. That was supposed to be the usual state of affairs in the nation – they lived in relationship with the Lord and He blessed them and goodness followed. But there was another side to the coin, there was evil, or curses, things that the Lord would bring upon them to chasten and discipline them to bring them to their senses. Hopefully, when they were first spoken, they would never be experienced because they were things that only a foolish people would experience, a people who turned away from all the goodness they were experiencing in their relationship with the Lord.

Sadly, the history of the Old Testament shows that sin is equated with stupidity and Israel again and again stupidly walked away from their inheritance and so the Lord had to bring upon them the ‘curses' to bring them back to Him. Observe this in the Old Testament and you see the Lord having to bring these things on them, and every time He does, Israel do come back and they come back into blessing. The curses worked; they brought Israel to their senses (because it is only a stupid person who rejects a life of receiving all of God's goodness). David's and Solomon's reigns epitomized the blessing of God, epitomised living in the good of all that God had for them, yet sadly even they got it wrong. Sadly sin shows itself, even in those who have known God's goodness! Hullo?

Did you notice the awfulness of the Lord's threat which was twofold: first, I will send bad on you and, second, I will turn all the good you have into bad. i.e. you won't even keep the good things you have at the moment. This is how serious the situation is! Here is the nation with centuries of experience of the Lord, who should have learnt that with God it was good and away from Him it was bad. Left to themselves, it always went wrong. This is how it had been in the past and this is how it will be NOW unless you start listening to my warnings. You are on the edge of a precipice; draw back.

Mal 2:3,4 "Because of you I will rebuke your descendants; I will spread on your faces the offal from your festival sacrifices, and you will be carried off with it. And you will know that I have sent you this admonition so that my covenant with Levi may continue," says the LORD Almighty.

These are strange verses and they need thinking about. The Lord is chiding the priests as a father chides his wayward children – all with the goal of rescuing them from destruction. The priests, we said, were the ‘ring-leaders' of Israel, the ones who should have the most influence in the nation, the ones drawing the nation to God. Now these verses are about the present and the future and they are verses of condemnation and of hope.

“Because of you.” That is His starting point. The Lord holds the guilty accountable. What is coming is all your fault. Be under no illusion about this. This is not God being capricious, this is not some freak accident of history. This is a specific outworking of their behaviour. What is coming is because of them. We each need to take responsibility for our own lives and what we do with them and not make excuses.

“I will rebuke your descendants.” The next generation is going to have dealings with the Lord. That is strange; we might expect the Lord to deal with this generation first, but He is more looking to the future and there is going to be hope. When we read of the Lord rebuking, we tend to think that is bad, but which is worse, being rebuked or destroyed? Why does the Lord rebuke? He does it to correct, to bring about change for the better. There is actually hope in these words. The Lord is going to straighten out the next generation. Do you remember what Paul said about all Scripture? It is “useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness.” (2 Tim 3:16) Rebuking is part of the correction and training process. It points out what is wrong so that it may be put right. The Lord's objective is to take the next generation and do things with them.

But what about this present generation? “I will spread on your faces the offal from your festival sacrifices, and you will be carried off with it.” Yuck! The offal was the insides of the sacrifices that were thrown away and was burned outside the camp (Ex 29:14, Lev 8:17). Spreading the offal on their faces would be an extreme insult and is clearly meant to identify the priests with the offal that is only good for throwing away. That is the Lord's assessment of them. And the result? They will be carried off. This has echoes of what had happened in the Exile. This is how serious this whole thing is! When we have suggested previously that the future of Israel is at risk, that is exactly right. If they are allowed to completely drift away from the Lord, it is probable that they may not survive.

“And you will know that I have sent you this admonition.” The result of this, when this has occurred, is that they will know that this was a genuine word from the Lord. Maybe the prophet senses within them a sense of rejection of what he is saying. Very well, he says, just wait until it happens and you'll know that this was God speaking. Sometimes the Lord uses this sort of logic: you'll knows it was true after it has happened. That was His logic with Moses while commissioning him at the burning bush (Ex 3:12), you'll know this is true when you get back here with your people. i.e. the proof of the word is in its outworking.

“So that my covenant with Levi may continue.” There it is! God's plan declared again: that His relationship with Israel might continue. It is not His intent to get rid of them. Everything He says and does is working towards the goal of Israel continuing and continuing in relationship with Him. We'll see more about Levi and the priesthood in the next meditation but suffice it to say that Levi represents the priesthood, and the priests, as we have said, are to be at the heart of Israel's relationship with the Lord.

These verses could possibly summed up as follows: “The situation is so serious that I am having to speak very seriously to you priests, for you are my special representatives in the nation and if you refuse to listen to my call to you to come back to me, then I will have to ‘sack' you and get rid of you and hand over your role to the next generation who will listen when I speak strongly to them.

The Biblical picture reveals the Lord who comes in grace again and again and again to plead with His people, but there comes a time when their intransigence is so clear and so set that it is as if He says, “Very well, you have used up all your chances. It is time to hand it on to someone else. You're fired!” May we not be those who try the Lord's patience.

Mal 2:4,5 And you will know that I have sent you this admonition so that my covenant with Levi may continue," says the LORD Almighty. "My covenant was with him, a covenant of life and peace, and I gave them to him; this called for reverence and he revered me and stood in awe of my name.

From Levi had come the Levites, the tribe who had been set aside to serve the Lord (Num 1:47-53) and out of whom, through Aaron, came the family of priests (Ex 4:14, 28:1,43). We have made comment already on their influence but that shortly comes to the fore, in the next meditation. But before it does, we have to consider something else that the Lord places before Israel. As part of Israel, Levi had been part of the covenant people, a people who had entered into a covenant with the Lord at Sinai. There the Lord had given a number of laws by which to live as a redeemed community and which would involve their relationship with Him. In return they would be His special people and would be continually blessed by Him.

However, another covenant had arisen between the priestly family and the Lord, when Aaron's grandson, Phinehas, had stepped forward and brought judgment on the idolatry and adultery of Israel with the Midianites (Num 25:6-9) and had received the Lord's commendation and a promise of a covenant of peace (Num 25:10-13), a covenant of an everlasting priesthood. This marked them out as special before the Lord. The fact that Phinehas had reverenced the Lord and recognised the need for holiness among the people, had brought the Lord's blessing. Hence the Lord's comment here, “this called for reverence and he revered me and stood in awe of my name.” It was that which marked out Phinehas and subsequently the whole priesthood out, this reverencing the Lord.

Perhaps there is no more important subject than this and it appears in various forms. Reverencing the Lord means, in its simplest form, seeing God as the greatest, and honouring Him because of that. We do this, in fact, when we become a Christian. We come to the end of ourselves and at the same time recognise who He is and surrender to Him. Surrendering our will to God is THE act of reverence. We may bow down before Him or even prostrate ourselves before Him, but unless our will is submitted to His, it is a mere outward physical act. Thus at any time in life when we need guidance and direction, our starting place must be to submit our wills to Him.

The unseeing critic may ask, “Why reverence God?” and the answer has to be, because there is no one in all of existence who is like Him. He is ever present, all-powerful, all-knowing, all-wise, and ever loving. If we truly see this we cannot but help reverence Him. When we don't reverence Him it is a sign that we don't see Him as He truly is. It may be that, like Israel, we started off well but along the way lost perspective and although we started out reverencing Him, we no longer do. If that is so, we need to pull ourselves up and focus afresh on Him, and remind ourselves who He truly is. It is a sign of complacency to be indifferent to the Lord. It is a sign that we have lost perspective, and this is what had happened to Israel.

Supposing you run across a married couple and they never seem to speak to each other and they never show any signs of intimacy, and when in a group they never sit next to each other, and you never see them holding hands (it doesn't matter how old!!!), you would doubt the reality of their relationship. It doesn't matter what they say, the reality is clearly different.

The same was also true of Israel. They protested that they were still religious but the reality was that no longer was there that heart of reverence, no longer was there a heart that was committed solely to Him. Their actions showed, as we've seen already, that any actions of theirs in respect of the Lord were begrudging and half-hearted. They have forgotten who the Lord is and what He has done for them. They are on the verge of collapse as far as this relationship is concerned. No wonder the Lord is speaking strongly to them. Their whole future is under threat.

Mal 2:6-8 True instruction was in his mouth and nothing false was found on his lips. He walked with me in peace and uprightness, and turned many from sin. "For the lips of a priest ought to preserve knowledge, and from his mouth men should seek instruction--because he is the messenger of the LORD Almighty. But you have turned from the way and by your teaching have caused many to stumble; you have violated the covenant with Levi," says the LORD Almighty.

The role of the priest included teaching. Although we mentioned Phinehas previously as an example of a man who reverenced God, his name is not mentioned in the text and so all these things must be applied more generally to the whole priesthood, the family that originated from Levi and became a tribe of priests and servants of God. This is still specifically about the priests.

The priest, with his (hopefully) close walk with the Lord, was to be a bringer of truth. He was to instruct the people in the truth about God and the ways of God. After the exile, Ezra the priest had come to Jerusalem: “Ezra son of Seraiah…. the son of Aaron the chief priest-- this Ezra came up from Babylon. He was a teacher well versed in the Law of Moses, which the LORD, the God of Israel, had given.” (Ezra 7:1-6) and we go on to read, “For Ezra had devoted himself to the study and observance of the Law of the LORD, and to teaching its decrees and laws in Israel. For Ezra had devoted himself to the study and observance of the Law of the LORD, and to teaching its decrees and laws in Israel.” (v.10) and we go on to see how he was a key leader who called twelve of the leading priests to work with him (v.24). That was the potential influence of the priests. They were the lynch pin, if you like, for ensuring the relationship with the Lord was upheld. Sadly it was often left to the king and sometimes to a prophet, but basically, it was the role of the priests to convey the truth of God and of their relationship with Him.

This was established right back with the first high priest, Aaron: “Then the LORD said to Aaron…. must distinguish between the holy and the common, between the unclean and the clean, and you must teach the Israelites all the decrees the LORD has given them through Moses." (Lev 10:8-11) Moses had had the role of bringing the Law from the Lord; Aaron and all the subsequent priests had the role of teaching it to future generations. That is why all this is so significant. As our verse above declares of the priests, “he is the messenger of the LORD Almighty.” Now we cannot emphasise enough in these studies that the role of Israel was to convey a true picture of the Lord to the world and failure to do that, virtually undermined the very reason for their existence. If, by their lives, they were conveying a different picture than the truth, then the Lord, for the sake of the rest of the world, would have to step in and do something to remedy the situation.

So if Israel were not doing that, you had to ask why, and the answer would always have to come back to – because the priests aren't doing their job. If the priests were teaching as they should have been, that would have acted as the conscience of the nation and would have called the nation back into a right relationship with the Lord – but they weren't! No, says the Lord, “You have turned from the way and by your teaching have caused many to stumble.” What was their teaching? Well, we aren't told, but it is said we speak not only with our words but also by what we do – or don't do.

One way of another the priests were conveying the impression that religious attendance wasn't very important. The fact had been that they had allowed people to bring blemished or second rate animals to be sacrificed. They should have stopped each person bringing such an offering, told them what the Law said, and sent them back home to get the best of their flocks or herds – but they hadn't done that. Second rate was the order of the day. God didn't matter really, He was tolerant, wasn't He? No, He's not! There are reasons for the laws He gives, good, down to earth, practical reasons and to ignore those reasons is to ignore God. No wonder the Lord is speaking so strongly to them.

Now I have to tell you, that I am feeling uncomfortable. The apostle Peter describing the Church said, “you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood.” (1 Pet 2:5) and goes on, “you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.” (1 Pet 2:9) Like the priesthood (and Israel) of old, we are called to be a light to the rest of the world. We are to be declaring the wonder of what has happened to us. For that to happen, we have to experience the wonder of what is happening to God's children, but I am not very sure when I look around the church today that I see lives that are radically different from the world, and which stand out for both their goodness and for their experience of the Lord. Are we, His priesthood today, conveying the image of a tolerant God who doesn't mind what goes? If we are, we are conveying a very wrong image! And it's time to change!

Mal 2:8,9 But you have turned from the way and by your teaching have caused many to stumble; you have violated the covenant with Levi," says the LORD Almighty. "So I have caused you to be despised and humiliated before all the people, because you have not followed my ways but have shown partiality in matters of the law."

Previously we didn't cover the outcome of the behaviour of the priests very well. We need to reiterate that their behaviour allowed the people to become lax in their behaviour; hence the bringing of inadequate offerings. Thus many people had drifted away from a genuine relationship with the Lord; they had ‘stumbled' in their faith, and it was all down to the priests. They had a covenant to be God's priests and they had fallen down on the job and violated that covenant.

Now note what has happened and we should note that it has happened already. This is not something that the Lord is going to do in the future; it has already happened. The priests held a position of honour in the nation – at least that is how it had started out and how it was supposed to be, because they were God's representatives, God's messengers (v.7). They have been despised and humiliated. How had that happened? We aren't told but when spiritual leaders fail to be spiritual, that is seen among the people and the people no longer respect them. More than that the people despise them and they are shown up for what they are and they are humiliated. When someone is humiliated they are made to look foolish. These priests carry on a form of religion but with no heart in it, and the people look down on them for what they are.

If you are unsure of this, consider the clergy in Britain at this time. Consider how they are portrayed on TV. They are portrayed as weak, ineffective and silly. Again and again they are humiliated. Increasingly in the Anglican Church at least (and some others) numbers in congregations are falling and it is very common for one vicar to preside over at least three congregations and such men (or women) are generally ignored by the majority of the population who see them more as curators, presiding over a dying, dead, outdated and irrelevant institution. The majority of churches are considered irrelevant by the majority of the population which is proved by a 5%, or less, church attendance on Sundays. The Catholic Church, because of its strong moral stance appears steady while most other denominations are either diminishing or remaining steady but ineffective in changing the nation.

Why should such a thing be? Because the priests (leaders) have not stood against the godless and unrighteous flow of culture and have not provided a viable alternative to the destructive way of the world and have not revealed Jesus in character or power. We have not sought the Lord and we have allowed the people to become complacent.

God's condemnation of the priests was simple and straight forward: “you have not followed my ways but have shown partiality in matters of the law." i.e. you have not kept to what I have shown you and you have been selective in what laws you will follow. We are not to follow just the bits we like but all of God's design for us. Young people, you are not to worship God on one hand and have sex outside marriage on the other. Business men, you are not to be there as deacons on Sunday and then follow dubious ethical practices on Monday. We could go on and on. We are not to have two sides to our lives. Every part of our lives should come under the will of God. We are not to be partial and choose bits of our lives to follow Jesus. No, he demands we give him all of our lives. This is the call and we need to get back to it as quickly as we can.

Mal 2:10 Have we not all one Father? Did not one God create us? Why do we profane the covenant of our fathers by breaking faith with one another?

Now, it seems, the prophet steps outside the prophecy and addresses Israel. It is all-embracing: “Have we not all one Father?” i.e. aren't we all the same in this nation? Are there any of us different? The implication is that some are behaving differently. People, he is saying, none of us in this nation are different, we've all had the same history, we've all got the same originator or Father. If you are part of this nation, this is true of you, so why (implied) are you pretending or behaving otherwise? “Did not one God create us?” Look at our history, think about it, face up to it. We are Israel because God created us and made us a nation back at Sinai after He delivered us from Egypt. And He's been there ever since!

I did say in an earlier meditation that we would need to think behind the few words infront of us, we would need to consider the reality behind their situation that explains the words. This is one of those times where you will only understand the words if you see the big picture of the whole of Israel's history. Essentially it started off with Abram, and even he came to see God as Creator of all things (Gen 14:22) realising that there was but one God, the Creator of everything – “God Most High” i.e. with none other like Him. Centuries later when the Lord revealed Himself to Moses at the burning bush, He described Himself by saying, “I AM has sent you” (Ex 3:14), i.e. the eternal one, and then described Himself as “The LORD, the God of your fathers--the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.” (Ex 3:15 ). Note in every description, it is singular. There IS just one God. The end product of that meeting with Moses was the delivered people of Israel arriving at Mount Sinai where they enter into covenant with this one God. He has created them. Without Him they would be just a bunch of slaves in Egypt still.

But Malachi looks at what some of them are doing and goes on to ask, “Why do we profane the covenant of our fathers by breaking faith with one another?” We have already referred to that covenant that was brought into being at Sinai. Put most simply, it was that they would have just this one God and He would bless them as a special people. Look, he says, don't you realise that you're not only breaking faith with God, you are breaking faith with one another. We are all part of one nation and we have entered into a covenant relationship with the One God but if some of you go off worshipping other gods or idols, you are no longer keeping this covenant with God and you are breaking away from the true Israel. Don't you see this! That is the strength of what comes through here in his words.

The more I have studied the Old Testament and studied the Law in recent years, the more I have come to see the devastating significance of what is behind these words. God made the world perfect but us with free will. Adam and Eve chose to exercise their free will against God and thereafter sin was seen in the whole human race – we all followed the same way. But God is a God of love and wanted to draw the world back to Him and so He chose one family to become one nation that He would draw to Himself, so that THEY would reveal Him to the rest of the world. The Old Testament is full of references to the rest of the world and to other nations, and God's objective through Israel was to reveal Himself to the rest of the world through them, by the way they lived differently (according to God's good design) and the way they related to Him.

As we have commented many times before, the Queen of Sheba coming to Solomon was a classic example of this when she came, “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.” (1 Kings 10:1) When she has seen it all she declares, “ 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 10:9) What an incredible response – and that was what Israel were meant to do throughout their history.

Yet we find again and again, they fail, they drift away from the Lord. Instead of being a blazing light to the rest of the world, so often they were more like a smoldering wick. Was that behind Isaiah's thinking when he declared, “a smoldering wick he will not snuff out.” (Isa 42:3). That surely is what they were like at this time when Malachi is speaking. How tragic!

Mal 2:11,12 Judah has broken faith. A detestable thing has been committed in Israel and in Jerusalem : Judah has desecrated the sanctuary the LORD loves, by marrying the daughter of a foreign god. As for the man who does this, whoever he may be, may the LORD cut him off from the tents of Jacob--even though he brings offerings to the LORD Almighty.

Marriage is the commitment of two people to each other for life. The relationship of the Lord and Israel is something equated with a marriage in the Old Testament – and also divorce! It is clear that the Lord expected Israel to be committed to Him and to no other from the outset of the establishing of the covenant at Sinai. A very simply reason for this is that in reality there is NO other God that they could give themselves to and yet the rest of the surrounding world was worshipping idols, representations of supposed ‘gods'. Egypt at the time of the Exodus had been saturated with such superstitious beliefs – for that is what they are, fear-filled superstitious beliefs in ‘powers' that might affect human life, ‘gods' that needed appeasing.

The major prophets derided this belief in wooden or metal, man-made images and pointed out the absurdity of worshipping something you had made with your own hands. Yet this is what was going on all around them and which, absurdly, Israel kept reverting to. Fearful superstition is what man on his own is prone to, even leading him to do awful things such as sacrifice his own children (Isa 57:5, Jer 32:35, Ezek 20:31, Hos 13:2). The Lord neither needed nor wanted such things to happen. He wasn't pleased by death (Ezek 18:23,32) and demanded no such sacrifice (The only time there was even a hint of this was with Abraham being asked to sacrifice Isaac, yet that was simply a test and the Lord did not let him do it).

To turn away from God and worship idols was a double sin. First of all it was purely stupid to give up the relationship with the living God, the God of love and goodness whose only desire was to bless Israel. Stupidity is the only word that can describe such a thing, but to then turn to a life of fear and superstition, bowing down to images of wood or metal and even going as far as killing your own children for them can only be described as detestable. Now if you are not sure of that word that Malachi uses, it means to be detested, to hate, to find horrible. That is what we SHOULD find when we are confronted by such stupid behaviour and such horrible behaviour. It demeans man and makes him look foolish. It should revolt us and make us want to turn away from it.

Here, in the midst of Jerusalem, they had rebuilt the Temple, supposedly the place for meeting with God and worshipping Him. It was a place that was supposed to be holy. When you approached Almighty God you approached Him on His terms. It was a unique place in the whole world but when Israel turned away from God to foreign ‘gods. In New Testament times a silver-smith named Artemis became upset with the apostle Paul because, “ He says that man-made gods are no gods at all.” (Acts 19:26 ). Now the Israelites had brought these ‘things' into the Temple and as signs or symbols of their unfaithfulness to God, it was virtually an insult to God and it was certainly desecrating the Temple. When you desecrate something you take away its holiness and make it ordinary. By doing what they were doing they were reducing the Temple from the meeting place and home of God, to just another building.

If you did this then you had clearly violated the covenant and were showing that you no longer considered yourself one of God's people, and so you deserved to be separated off or cut off from them. It didn't matter is you still offered second-rate sacrifices here. If you worshipped other ‘gods' you showed that your heart was far from God and whatever you did was purely self centred and godless and you should not consider yourself part of this holy people.

Again it emphasises the difference between heart action and mere outward show. God does not look for outward show; He wants heart commitment from His children and anything less means there is a question mark over whether we are truly His children.

Mal 2:13,14 Another thing you do: You flood the LORD's altar with tears. You weep and wail because he no longer pays attention to your offerings or accepts them with pleasure from your hands. You ask, "Why?"

Complacency is linked to blindness. We have been saying that this community of God's people have slid into a complacent mode whereby their religious expressions are quite half-hearted, aided and abetted by the priesthood who tolerated the people bringing in damaged sacrifices. Now here is the thing to note, and it comes out quite clearly in the verses above: these people were still carrying our religious activity and still had spiritual attitudes, even while they were settled in a complacent mode. Complacency says, “Give me just enough religion, but not too much.” Complacency says don't upset my peace, don't upset my enjoyment of my world, don't upset ME. Complacency says, don't ask more of me, don't challenge me, and don't suggest I need to change. Complacency likes it as it is, complacency is comfortable with the familiar and doesn't like being put in a situation where you have to trust and rely on God. Complacency likes religion that is doing the same things, week in, week out.

Yet there is another side to this coin, because when you settle into this mode, you are in conflict with the Holy Spirit who IS seeking to bring God's will to us, who is seeking to challenge us, who is seeking to take us on and who is seeking to develop and mature us. And so one half of us prefers this painless, self-orientated worship focused on personal pleasure, but unfortunately (we feel) there is another side of us that wants more and is dissatisfied with what we have. These people felt that. They brought their offerings, second rate though they were, and went away feeling dissatisfied. Somehow they didn't go away with a sense of the Lord's approval. It seemed an empty experience. Is this why so many people are dropping out of church today, because it seems an empty experience?

For further clarity on this we need to go back to Gideon. Do you remember this little man (in his own eyes at least) who was beating out wheat in the seclusion of a wine press, because he feared the Midianite marauders. Then along comes an angel who says, “The LORD is with you, mighty warrior.” (Jud 6:12). Two things in that grated with Gideon. First he did not feel a mighty warrior and, second, everything about the state of the nation seemed to imply that the Lord wasn't with them!

Gideon was blind to the truth of the situation. First he WAS a might warrior because that was what the Lord saw in him and knew he would become in future experience. Second, their circumstances were as they were because God was at work disciplining them. They were going through this oppression from Midianite marauders because the Lord was using them to drive Israel back into His arms. That was the truth of that situation.

So what was the truth of the present situation? Why was it that Israel, deep down, had this awareness of the Lord not being there to bless their spiritual activities? Many years ago when I was contemplating fasting again (for it was something I had done a number of times), the Lord spoke to me and said, “I will not bless your spiritual activities; I will bless your obedience.” We can perform all sorts of religious activities – going to church on a Sunday, reading my Bible, even praying, even fasting – but unless we are actually being obedient to what the Lord has said, we will be missing it!

There may be a number of reasons why the Lord seems distant, some of them involving Him and some of them involving us. If we are wise, when we sense He is not blessing what we are doing, we need to step aside and seek Him for the reason. There is likely to be a reason and if we will listen, He will eventually share it. We'll see in the next meditation why this was happening at this time, but for the moment, we'll simply focus on the matter of blindness that accompanies complacency. They were asking why was it that God didn't seem concerned with their offerings? Malachi, as we've said before, is rather like a spiritual check-up. The prophet needs to face them up with the symptoms of their present state, for they seem unable to see it for themselves.

The psalmist prayed, “Open my eyes that I may see wonderful things in your law.” (Psa 119:18 – recognizing his need for revelation) but Jesus when speaking to the church at Laodicea counselled, “I counsel you to buy from me …. salve to put on your eyes, so you can see.” ( Rev 3:18 ). And why did they need to see? Because, “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 17). Their affluence had led them into a complacent state, rather like the church today so often. When we have slipped into complacency, we no longer are able to see our true state. We think we are fine, but in reality we are far from fine! Maybe we need to pray and ask the Lord to help us see the true state of the church today.

Mal 2:14 You ask, "Why?" It is because the LORD is acting as the witness between you and the wife of your youth, because you have broken faith with her, though she is your partner, the wife of your marriage covenant.

The Lord never speaks in a vacuum. When He speaks it is with a purpose and there is always a reason behind it. When something is going on that you do not understand, there IS a reason behind it. The turmoils of life may be caused by the Lord, by Satan as His agent, by our own foolishness, or by the actions of others. We may not know who or what is involved, but underneath everything someone or something IS there; things don't happen on their own in a vacuum. We have cited Gideon twice already in these studies as someone who simply didn't understand the spiritual dynamics of what was going on in his country. The Jews of Malachi's day are exhibiting that same blindness.

They had been anguishing over the apparent lack of the Lord's blessing on their religious activities and now asked why was that? What is surprising in these sort of situations is that we don't stand still and think and wonder what actually could be the reasons. Is it that God no longer loves us? No, we know in our history He has spoken about His love which never changes. Has God changed? No, that is not possible. Well, if it's not God, who can it be? Well, there are only two sides to this covenant: God and Israel. If it's not God then it must be Israel. At which point you should (if you have any sense) look at your life and measure it against what God has said. Don't cry about the tedium of your religious life or about God's apparent absence if you are not living out the relationship the way Jesus said!

Now what is funny at first sight about the prophet's response to them is that the Lord is NOT acting as a witness between Himself and them. No, He stands as a witness between them as they are now, and them as they once were. When He speaks of the ‘wife of your youth', He means the sort of wife to me, your spiritual husband, that you once were. He splits them into two people because they have become so different from what they once were. Once, at Sinai, they were a people who gladly and wholeheartedly entered into the covenant with the Lord. At various times through their history they had declared that again. At such times they had been all out for God, but how different they now were.

For ourselves, we might say, have I remained true to myself over the years. When I was a young person I saw it all so clearly and I was all out for God. I was an out and out Christian who the powers of darkness quaked before. But as the years have passed? Yes, the strength of youth may have diminished but that doesn't mean that our testimony and zeal have to diminish. Listen to how the psalmist envisioned us growing old: “The righteous will flourish like a palm tree, they will grow like a cedar of Lebanon; planted in the house of the LORD, they will flourish in the courts of our God. They will still bear fruit in old age , they will stay fresh and green, proclaiming, "The LORD is upright; he is my Rock, and there is no wickedness in him." (Psa 92:12-15) What a beautiful picture of righteousness in old age! Had Israel ‘stayed fresh and green'? No! Were they still bearing fruit in the form of the blessing of the Lord, revealing Him to the rest of the world? No! Where they still praising His name? No!

It is very easy to point the finger at Israel in the face of the prophet's denunciation, but how do we measure up today – honestly – as His church? These questions are not meant to condemn but to challenge. Were we more on fire when we were younger? Did our ‘first love' shine brighter then than it does now? Are we as a church open to all those around us, to love them, care for them and bless them with God's love in more than words? Is the world round about us impacted by God's love, grace, wisdom and power expressed through us, so their hearts are melted and open to Him? Is God able to transform lives through us?

Mal 2:15,16 Has not the LORD made them one? In flesh and spirit they are his. And why one? Because he was seeking godly offspring. So guard yourself in your spirit, and do not break faith with the wife of your youth. "I hate divorce," says the LORD God of Israel

Now we have to backtrack here because I dare risk saying that I think most commentators miss the point of what is here and start talking about human marriages, but that is not what these lines are all about. In verse 10 we read: “Why do we profane the covenant of our fathers by breaking faith with one another?” Now that could possibly refer to breaking the law by breaking up human relationships although that seems an unusual word construction if he was suggesting that. He continues in verse 11: Judah has broken faith. A detestable thing has been committed in Israel and in Jerusalem: Judah has desecrated the sanctuary the LORD loves, by marrying the daughter of a foreign god.

This is not about individuals but about the nation and the ‘detestable thing' is not general but “in Jerusalem” and then it is shown to be in respect of the “sanctuary”, the Temple. It is then made even clearer that this is spiritual adultery by reference to “a foreign god”. This is not human marriage adultery, but spiritual adultery that is being referred to here. Note also “the daughter of a foreign god”, not daughters of an alien people who worship foreign gods. It is singular and as such must be a spiritual reference. Although there are references in both Ezra and Nehemiah to intermarrying with pagan peoples, in both of the books there is reference to sending the women away – yet we are soon to find the Lord declaring that He hates divorce. He cannot be referring to physical union and breakup, but a spiritual one.

The complaint that followed on is all about offerings not being accepted by the Lord and the Lord's rejection of them is because you, the nation, have broken faith with the person you once were. There is no indication that the passage changes from spiritual adultery to physical adultery. Yes, the picture language is difficult but it is all about them falling away from what they once were. It is faintly possible to think about physical adultery IF you ignore the reference to a foreign god and if you ignore the fact that the whole of this short book is about Judah's wrong attitude towards God and the way they have spiritually walked away from God.

So, returning to what we have seen before, he is comparing them to what they once were and he reminds them they are still the same physical people, offspring of that nation that was brought out of Egypt, so the old Israel and the new Israel are one; there is a physical continuance down through the generations and the Exile did not break that. So in body and Spirit, this present Israel are still part of that original nation who covenanted with the Lord at Sinai. They are still part of that original nation, covenanted with God and the reason why that is so is because the Lord STILL wants to bring offspring from them. If we see the “godly offspring” as individuals we miss the thrust of the whole of the Old Testament, brought to a climax in the New, that the Lord wants to bring offspring from all nations of the world, not merely this one.

The failure of the spiritual relationship with the Lord is THE critical issue in the Old Testament because it was through that relationship that the world was to be touched. This is the big picture here and why it is so critical. Israel's half-hearted relationship with the Lord would affect their ability to be a light to the rest of the world. When the prophet says, “So guard yourself in your spirit, and do not break faith with the wife of your youth,” it again must refer back to what they had once been in the early days of the nation. The marrying foreign women recorded in Ezra and Nehemiah was by those who had no wives. They did not abandon their wives to take foreign wives. No, the meaning here is, “Check out your spiritual relationship and so do not depart from being the wife of the Lord that you were at the beginning."

Now comes the Lord's declaration that we so often take out of context: “I hate divorce.” In this context it is all about HIS relationship with Israel. He hates the very thought of abandoning the plan from before the foundation of the world that involved Israel . Israel might have abandoned Him but He will never abandon Israel. He will always look out for a faithful remnant and preserve them so that His plans for the future can be continued through them. This declaration is the Lord declaring to the world that the last thing on His mind is to cast the faithful remnant away. Israel WILL continue and they will continue to be His!

Mal 2:17 You have wearied the LORD with your words. "How have we wearied him?" you ask. By saying, "All who do evil are good in the eyes of the LORD, and he is pleased with them" or "Where is the God of justice?"

The Jews of the New Testament felt that they were special people who had the truth. Then came Jesus and now we Christians believe WE are the keepers of truth. The trouble with doctrine is that there is a lot of it and we may be right in some areas but not in others. What is here in this verse is, I believe, very pertinent for the church today. The prophet starts out, the Lord is tired of listening to you. Hold on, he foresees them responding, why should we have tired Him? He answers, because you haven't been speaking the truth and that upsets (implied) the Lord.

Now when you look at what they had been saying, you may think it is quite obvious but I have to warn you that I am shortly going to put it in a modern context and it is not so obvious. They had been saying that even evil people, people doing wrong, were good in the eyes of the Lord. This isn't explained in detail but they probably say what we say – well, God loves everybody so it's all right. Now admittedly it looks like they were being cynical when they were saying it because they also said (expanding it), God accepts everyone because after all we don't see Him coming and judging sinners; they seem to be getting away with what they are doing. Now I realise that I have implied a lot that but that does seem to be what it is saying.

The modern equivalent is that “God loves you, so everything is all right.” Now I feel almost bad here, because as a preacher I have been preaching for over twenty years, “The Lord loves you exactly as you are, but He loves you so much that He's got something better for you that He wants to lead you into.” I have a feeling that often people only hear the first part of that: God loves me just as I am.

Now I am sure that that is true but the second part is even more so: God sees what we're like and He sees how we fall short of what we could be and so because He loves us, He wants to help change us, to bring us into maturity. A message that says, “God loves you” or “God loves you exactly as you are” is only part of the truth and left as it is it can result in Christians being quite content to live second-class lives or even lives tolerating what is clearly wrong.

We need to understand something about love: you can love someone but still grieve over things they say or do. If one of our children went off the rails and started living an immoral life, we would still love them, but hate the lifestyle. God can love you but that doesn't mean he accepts your bad temper or your irritability or your smoking or your excessive drinking, or living with someone without being married. There appear to be a whole number of things we tolerate in the Christian community today – in the name of love – but it is not love for God.

When God saved us, He saved us to change us. Prior to us encountering Him, we lived the way we did because of what we thought, and it was often clearly (now we see) very different from God's design. God's design says love people, accept people, forgive people, pray for people. Until we met Jesus we got irritable with people and were completely self-centred. In the years you have left on this earth, God is going to change that. Why? Because He loves you. We, all of us, have a lot of changing to do, If we have settled in what we are, we've missed the point. Jesus is in the process of changing our character and changing our service.

Now we said earlier that the Jews of Malachi's day were cynical and were saying, “Well, where is God? He doesn't seem to be moving? Where is His justice?” But the point is that God wants us to play a part in all that goes on. He wants us to be bringing justice, He wants us to be making an effort to change, He wants us to exercise self-control. The good news, of course, is that He has put His Holy Spirit within us to help us achieve that – but it starts with an act of will on our part. Come to a standstill? It's time to get moving again. Change is here to stay. God has something better for you – because He loves you.