Malachi 1:1-5 From Questioning to Praising

Listening to the podcast of Recast Church in Mattawan, Michigan. This week, Pastor Don Filsack preaches from his series, Dead Religion, taking us through the book of Malachi. Let's listen in.

Worshiping Together and the Need for Christian Community

Well, good morning, Recast Church.

I'm Don Filsack. I'm the lead pastor here, and I'm happy to be together with God's people. I hope you're happy as well, together, together. It's a good thing to come together to worship God in community.

If you're anything like me, then you need that. You need that reminder that you are not in isolation, but that God has called us together as a people, and we need one another to sharpen each other, to hold each other accountable, to work through life together, and to know that there are others who have the same values, who are believing the same things, and are working towards the same goals.

I know that not everybody that you encounter in any given week holds the same things that you hold dear, and believes in Jesus Christ, and even wants to honor him with their lives. A lot of times out there, if we're going it alone, that can be tough.

I personally benefit from getting together and having conversations here, and even just the preparation for hearing from his word. Of course, I try to hear from it as well. You can think of me as the pastor who stands up here and tells you the word, but this has an impact on me long before I ever get up here and share it with you.

I wanted to give everybody a building update just briefly this morning. How many of you have actually seen our property?

I'm just curious.

How many of you have actually been out there, the new property that we have? How many of you have actually driven back in there, a handful of us? I would encourage you to, not during business hours, because there's a lot of construction going on back there.

I just don't want anybody to get in the way, or to be hurt back there. Even this afternoon, it's a nice day out. It's going to be pretty nice out there, and so if you wanted to take a chance to drive out there.

Our goal is to eventually, maybe when spring hits, to have an opportunity for us to go out there as a group and pray. It's just that the weather is so unpredictable that it's kind of hard to organize that in advance right now.

We don't want anybody to be cold, and you have to prepare for boots and all that stuff. Where we're at right now, the land has been cleared. All the trees are out that they're going to take out now, and so you can go back there and see that.

There is a gravel drive in there, so it's more safe to drive back in there. Just know your vehicle and the conditions. If it does get wet, then it does get a little sloppy back in there. It's cleared out.

They've got it leveled now. They've been working all week bringing gravel for the base for the parking lot where the asphalt is going to be put, so you can see where the parking lot is. The foundation has been mostly laid for the building.

It goes in in two stages. Tomorrow, they're hoping to pour the final footers for the building, so the foundations will be all in hopefully by the end of the day tomorrow. The steel arrives on the 13th of February, the steel building, and they'll begin construction on that in the middle of February.

I'm just praising God for the way that that is going. Just continue to be praying for that process. Continue to pray that God continues in the financial realm as well. Again, this church from day one has been extremely generous, and we haven't had to have a capital campaign.

We haven't sold chairs. We haven't sold bricks. No gimmicks. Just been a fund that's opened, an expansion fund for people to give to that, and we're going to continue to keep that open for anybody who would choose to give towards that building and expansion project.

Just been amazing to see how God has provided that. I think it'd be appropriate for us to give God a hand on that. There's a building going up on that property out there, and I'm just excited for what he's doing.

Truth, Scripture, and Preaching Through Books of the Bible

The T in Recast, most of you know, stands for our core value here of truth. The T, it's replicating community, authenticity, simplicity, and truth. With that belief that the scriptures, the Bible, is the truth, we take the time each week to look into the scriptures, into God's word, the Bible, to see what God desires to communicate to us.

My style is really to preach through books of the Bible, chapter by chapter. From time to time, I'll take maybe a handful of times in the course of seven years. I've taken a little bit of a topical sermon here or there, but by and large, it is a series going through a book of the Bible.

This morning, we're going to be starting a new series in an Old Testament prophet, the prophet Malachi. It's the last book of the Old Testament. To be quite honest, the prophets can be quite confusing.

Have any of you ever read the prophets? You've read those Old Testament prophets? Have any of you ever been confused by something that you read in the prophets? I think everybody who said that they have read through them raised their hand, right?

You've been confused by something in there. It can be a little bit confusing to us if we haven't studied them before. But Malachi begins, this book begins with a strong declaration in our text that we're going to be looking at this morning that God loves his people.

Even if his people don't feel like he loves them, even if they do not deserve his love,.

God loves his people.

And if you've been brought into his kingdom by faith and allegiance to his son, Jesus Christ, then his relationship toward you is one of love and commitment and kindness toward.

You.

The people of God during Malachi's day doubted the love of God, as we're going to see in our text. They doubted it. And even asked him, prove it to us, show us, how have you loved us, God? I assume this had a lot to do with their circumstances.

And so think in terms of your circumstances. Think in terms of how you are processing the love of God in your circumstances. Sometimes we might go through that too. We ourselves can find ourselves in a position of doubting God's love for us.

But for those who belong to him, God will point us to the long-term perspective of what we deserve as sinners, what our destination as sinners would have been were it not for his love shown to us. What he has promised to us as children could not be further from the reality of what we.

Deserve.

And that, in that we see his love. We're going to see in this text a movement among the people of God, among those who are called by his name and those who are covenant people, those who God has entered into a relationship of saying, I will do this for you.

I pledge it by myself, by my own honor, by my own authority, I pledge to do good for.

You.

And we're going to see people move from questioning God to, by the end, a declaration of praise to the greatness of God. They're going from questioning him, how have you loved us, to great is the Lord.

Great is our God. So let's open our Bibles to Malachi 1, 1 through 5, a little bit shorter text. But it's in Malachi. It's the last book in the Old Testament. So if you find Matthew, then you can turn back a couple pages and you can find it that.

Way.

And that's a fairly easy way. If you don't have a Bible or a means to navigate to the Bible on a device, maybe you've got an iPhone or an Android or something that you've got an app on. But if you don't have one, if you could just raise your hand, and Mike's got some back here and he would love to bring one to you.

The only reason I'm asking is not to call you out, but just that everybody has a copy of God's Word to be able to see, follow along and see that what we're talking about this morning comes from God's Word.

But this is, Recast, this is God's Word to us. This is what he desires for you and I to hear from him this morning. He's brought us together, not by some chance, but because he wants to communicate to us.

And so Malachi 1, 1 through 5. The Oracle of the Word of the Lord to Israel by Malachi. I have loved you, says the Lord, but you say, how have you loved us? Is not Esau Jacob's brother, declares the Lord?

Yet I have loved Jacob, but Esau I have hated. I have laid waste his country and left his heritage to jackals of the desert. If Edom says we are shattered, but we will rebuild the ruins the Lord of hosts says, they may build, but I will tear down.

And they will be called the wicked country and the people with whom the Lord is angry forever. Your own eyes shall see this and you shall say, great is the Lord beyond the borders of Israel.

Let's pray.

Father, I thank you for calling us together. I thank you for the opportunity that we have to praise you and to worship you. Father, I thank you for the salvation that we have through your son Jesus Christ and the hope that we have that he has demonstrated such love to us while we were sinners, while we were his enemies, while we were in opposition, he died for us.

And so Father, I pray that as we get an opportunity to continue our worship this morning, a worship that hopefully has been carried through this whole week of not just singing songs, but doing what we do for you to honor you, to not be grumblers and complainers and to be building others up and encouraging one another and all of those aspects of worship that come together in this morning that we have together to worship you in singing and hearing from your word and taking it in and contemplating it and moving out from this place.

Father, I pray that we would sing songs of delight and joy because of your love for us that we've experienced. Father, that we'd be reminded of your great love for us this morning. Many of us might have lost sight of that because of busyness or because of circumstances that seem hard right now and your love seems obscured and clouded right now.

Maybe some of us, it's just the weather, just going through and not seeing the sun for days can be a challenge. And Father, I pray that you would impress your love on every heart that is here. In Jesus' name.

Amen.

The Prophetic Books as a Burden and Call to Repentance

Yeah, you can go ahead and be seated. And just thanks to Dave and the band for leading us. I appreciate the effort and the time that they put in each week. And then go ahead and make yourself comfortable.

I recognize that the seats that you're sitting in are not the most comfortable of chairs. And so if you need to get up at any time during the message and stretch out in the back or just give your back a break, feel free to do that.

And then remember there's more coffee and juice and doughnuts while supplies last up.

There.

You're not gonna distract me if that's what you need to keep your focus on God's word. Just jump up there and get anything at any time. And I would ask you also just to do me a favor and keep your Bibles open to Malachi.

Really do yourself a favor. Keep your Bibles open to Malachi chapter 1 verses 1 through 5. And just so you can see that the flow of my message is coming from the text and you can reference it and just check into it to see if the things that I'm saying are accurate or not.

I'm never going to try to intentionally trick you, but I am not perfect. And so I just love it that you guys have a copy of God's word to be able to check it out and see that that is the flow of our text.

You can look at it and check it out as I'm going through this. Now I want to set the stage for us this morning by explaining the prophetic books in some general sense. The prophetic books comprise about 20 of the Old Testament.

They were written over a span of about 400 years. That 400 years spans from about 800 years before Christ was born to about 400 years before Christ was born. The prophet Malachi was somewhere as the estimates are between 430 and 460 BC and so you kind of get that rough estimate about 400 BC, the last prophet before Jesus came and really before John the Baptist came on the scene.

So when we hear the word prophecies, what comes to your mind? What do you think of when you hear the word prophecy or prophet? I would guess that many of you when you hear the word prophecy have some kind of future telling idea in your mind.

Someone who can tell the future. How many of you that kind of concept comes into your mind when you think about prophet? I think a handful of us and the rest of us are just not wanting to raise our hand yet this morning.

But you'll get warmed up and eventually you'll raise your hand on one of these. So it's this idea in our culture is a prophet is somebody who tells the future. But what we really ought to think of more if you were to just take the bulk of what the prophets say in that 20 of the Old Testament, the bulk of what they say is calling their culture to repentance.

Calling the covenant people back into a relationship with God that yields obedience and right living. The prophets were occasionally, of course, we know, given glimpses into the future. And that's the kind of thing that stands out to us, right?

That grabs our attention because that's kind of radical, that's kind of different. And so that's why our minds gravitate towards that idea of them being able to tell the future. But the prophets were given revelation by God to speak into their cultural context to correct the slide primarily of God's people.

Now occasionally they would speak to, excuse me, pagan nations. They would speak to people from other cultures. But by and large, they primarily spoke to God's covenant community. And their primary purpose in writing was to address the covenant community of God.

Those people who were already in a relationship with God. Really to tell them that they had, where they had lost their way in relationship to God. That was, they weren't in the correct, living the right way and in right relationship.

They often, they often, the prophets often told the people of God in quite harsh and direct language. And I think that's where it kind of rubs our culture the wrong way. Maybe some of the more confusing things that you read in the prophets are some of the more harsh things that you read in the prophets.

We're going to see some of those harsh things as we go through the book of Malachi. All of the prophets have something that kind of goes, you know, I mean to preach through any of them, you're going to encounter something that's like, whoa, settle down there Malachi.

Settle down there Micah. Settle down there Obadiah. Every one of them has something in there that kind of grabs you and is like, whoa, wait a minute. That's, and a lot of it is intentionally, remember God speaking through the prophets is declaring to his people what he wants of them and what he's observed of their sinfulness and what he's observed of their lifestyle and their slide away from being in right relationship with him.

So the specific context of the book of Malachi really matters significantly to us as we're going to go through this book. And so I'm glad that you're here for the opening of this. I'm not going to go through this same history that I'm going to go through right now before every one of these messages, but I think it is valuable for us to understand when this was written because it helps us to understand why Malachi and why God through Malachi is addressing the people the way that he is.

So I know that a lot of people in here, some of you like history. Anybody here like some history and then some don't. And so I'm not going to ask you to raise your hand, but we're going to give you a little bit of history here just briefly.

Again, hold tight. We'll get through this history together and some of it's, some of it's you're aware of, but the way that it flows together kind of matters. And so let me start with the Exodus and give a, give a brief whirlwind tour of how the people of Israel, the Jews find themselves in this context, receiving these words that God reveals to them through the prophet Malachi.

Well, we know the first thing that God's going to say is, I have loved you. And understanding why would God be saying that to this people? Don't they know that? Why wouldn't they know that? Why would this be kind of new information to them?

Why is it even worth putting a pen to parchment to write this? And so we need to understand exactly what's going on. So through circumstances that we know are recorded in Genesis, I preached through the book of Genesis and many of you were here for that.

God's people were slaves in Egypt. Through plagues on Egypt, many miracles and trials, God brought his people out. Through the miracle of the Red Sea, for example, and many other things, the provision of manna and all of those things in relationship to his people and showing himself to be a provider and faithful to them.

And he was following a promise that he had made to a guy, an ancient guy named Abraham and his son, Isaac, he re-upped the commitment, the covenant that he made with Abraham. He re-confirmed that with Isaac and then he re-confirmed it with Isaac's son, Jacob.

And the promise was simply this, I'm gonna bless you with a great land. I'm gonna give you a place to settle. I'm gonna bless you with many offspring. I'm gonna make your numbers, the numbers of your descendants like the stars in the sky.

And I'm going to bless all the nations through one of your offspring. A three-part promise that he gave to Abraham and kind of re-confirmed to the people down through the ages and we reap the spiritual benefits of those promises that were to Abraham.

I don't know if you've ever thought about it, but you are one of those stars if you're a child of God, one of those stars that Abraham saw in the sky, I don't believe it's literal but I mean, when he saw that multitude, you were one of them.

You were one of them that he was, that was revealed as a child of the faith of Abraham,.

So to speak.

If you're in through Christ, through that descendant who was promised to Abraham, one of his offspring would be a blessing to all the nations. His name is Jesus Christ. And so that promise was given to the people, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, then in that exodus, God took them on a little detour past this mountain called Sinai.

And there, that generation got their re-confirmation. I will be your God, you will be my people. In relationship to God then, here is how I want you to live, here is how I want you to be a distinct people.

A lot of those laws that you read about in Leviticus, really confusing to us, cloths sewed with two different kinds of fibers and things like that. It was about distinction, it was about standing out.

When you realize what the giving of the law in Leviticus and in the latter half of Exodus is, it was about relationship with God and a different kind of relationship to culture and society around them.

On their approach to the promised land, they went by Sinai, received the law, a re-confirmation, I will be your God, you be my people, I covenant to do good for you. And then they were approaching the land of promise that God was going to give to them and in order to approach from the east, they had to go through a land called Edom.

But they came to the border of Edom and Edom came out in force and prevented the Israelites from going through their land. They said, we won't even drink from your wells, just let us pass through. And the Edomites said, no way, and came out with military force to oppose the Israelites who were coming through.

Now I only mention that, that's found by the way in Numbers 20 verses 14 through 21 for anybody who wants to look that up and read it later. But I only mention that because Edom is mentioned in our text and it kind of bears, comes to bear on our text this morning.

But under Joshua then, Moses dies, Joshua was taken really by the Lord and under Joshua the people of God conquered the land that God gave to them. They struggled to completely take the land and settled into a time of skirmishes with the other nations around them called the Judges.

Some of you have read the book of Judges before in the Old Testament. And then they united under the first king, Saul. Samuel was one of the earliest prophets and under, and heard the people's cry and God allowed them to have a king and King Saul had a divided heart.

His kingship was taken from him and was given to King David and King David was set up in his place. A man who, it was said, had a heart after God, a man after God's own heart. And King David was a uniting influence under his reign.

The nation expanded and had relative peace. Then his son Solomon became king after him. And here's something that just kind of is a historical nugget for you if you're curious about these kinds of things.

The highest point of the nation of Israel's history as a nation was under King Solomon. He had the most territory extending way over into modern day Iraq and some would even say maybe even parts of Iran at one point would have been possessed by King Solomon.

His reign was massive. His area was the largest extent that Israel ever possessed. And of course, he's known for his amazing wisdom and people came from other nations to seek out the wisdom of Solomon.

But Solomon did not do such a great job passing along that heritage to his children. After Solomon's son made some foolish decisions early on in his reign, the nation was split in half between north and south.

The north known as Israel, the south called Judah during this divided time. And so the books of Kings and Chronicles, 1 and 2 Kings, 1 and 2 Chronicles that we see in the Old Testament is really a story of those kings and the way that they ruled in the north over Israel and the south over Judah.

And really they remained divided for the remainder of Israel's history. The north, again, Israel, the south, Judah during that period of time. And it's during that age of the kings that the majority of the prophets came.

So now we're down to the age of the prophets, the majority of them spoke to either the north.

Or the south.

There's the rare prophet who would speak to both. But that's really where that 20 of the end of the book is to that divided nation and the kings were a mixed bag of whether or not they were good or whether they were evil.

The majority of them were evil, led the people to actually sacrifice all the way up to sacrificing children to pagan gods, terrible practices that happened during that era and that time in Israel's history.

Again, the prophets were sent to call them back into relationship with God time and time again. And often during that divided kingdom, it would be kind of like a family that goes to church because it's just a cultural thing to do.

There were the forms of religiosity, but a lot of it was not in the heart. There was just the duty, just the go do this thing and I've checked it off my list and the prophets are calling, calling, calling, calling, come back to me, come back to God in relationship.

And we might understand, begin to understand the opening line, the opening thing that God has to say to his people here through the prophet Malachi. But we're not quite to the age of Malachi yet because some other major things have happened before Malachi.

So Malachi is a unique prophet. He's going to come after an intense and amazing event in the history of Israel. God was warning through the prophets, warning, warning, warning during this divided kingdom and the north was conquered by Assyria.

God sent Assyria and it says as much in scripture to conquer the north and the Babylonians God raised up and sent to conquer the south and Jerusalem was besieged in the darkest day of Israel's history in 586 BC and that's a hard and fast historical date.

This is one of the most notable ancient historical dates on record, 586, corroborated by people who don't believe anything that you and I believe, 586 BC, Babylon besieged Jerusalem, knocked down her walls, destroyed the temple, took out all of the artifacts from the temple and hauled off massive numbers of people, the youngest who were able to work.

That's where Daniel, the book of Daniel comes in. Daniel served as a wise guy to three kings of three different nations but starting with Babylon he was carted off. And even King Zedekiah who was the king of Judah during this time had his eyes gouged out and was carried off to Babylon as a trophy.

So dark times for Israel. Fast forward from that date, 586 BC, fast forward 130 years and we get to Malachi. We get to Malachi and things have changed again. Babylon was conquered by the Medes, the Persians conquered the Medes and now the people are allowed to resettle Israel.

Nehemiah comes back, builds the walls around Jerusalem again, rebuilds those walls that were destroyed. Under Ezra and a guy with a funny name, Zerubbabel, another group of exiles returns and builds the temple again.

So now there's a new temple and Malachi is now writing to those people who have returned to Jerusalem. A pretty rough period of history there for being carted off, the destruction that all occurred and many of these people that he's speaking to are first generation returnees.

They weren't raised here. They were born where? In 130 years where would they have been born?

Babylon.

Babylon. All of these people that he's writing to were not born in Israel. They were born in exile in another country that wasn't their own with all of the pagan practices. This people, this is a people whose history has been shattered.

They have reasons to hope but only because they have been brought back into the land but I'm not sure that they even fully recognize that, the greatness of that and the faithfulness of God in that. But as a people, they've been through a tough period in their history as a people.

I don't think we can as Americans, we just don't understand, I mean the idea of being exiled is pretty far, does anybody wake up in the morning and fear exile? If you do, I mean I'd encourage you to come and talk with me, we can get some help.

But if you're, in all honesty, we just don't fear that, that's not a real legitimate fear that we think that somebody's going to come in and cart us off and take us to another nation to try to adopt and assume their lifestyle and force us into subservient lifestyle or something like that.

But that was reality for these people, that's what they had experienced. They had experienced this as kids, they're hearing the stories from just their parents' generation about these things or even grandparents who talked about the horrible, horrific siege.

Of Jerusalem.

And so in verse 1, in verse 1, Malachi is given a burden from the Lord for these exiles,.

A burden.

The Hebrew word translated, oracle, is literally burden, heavy weight. And often the prophets spoke about their prophecies as being a heavy weight on their shoulders. Ezekiel talks about it like a fire in his bones and if I don't speak God's word, it burns me up from the inside out.

But I have to speak to say, we get a little indication of what it must have been like to be a prophet. We even see some of the prophets like Jeremiah resistant to it at first and like, I don't really, could you call somebody else to this role, God?

Could you use somebody else's voice? I'm not super eager to this. Not everyone who was a prophet in the Old Testament was eager to judge their culture. Some of us in the room, maybe you're eager to judge their culture, right?

But they were not eager to light up their community for God. They were not all happy to be used by God to convey that judgment and correction to their culture. But I think at the end of the day, they were, God, whatever you need to do, whatever you want to do with me, I'm here and I'm available.

They suffered for it. Most all of the prophets suffered greatly for their call to ministry, for their call to their culture, for correction and to come back to God. But Malachi faithfully carries the burden of the word of the Lord to Israel.

And Israel is the people of God, remember, who have been called out by him and who have been promised good things by him. They have been brought into a relationship with the Almighty God based on his promises.

To them.

There's a contract between them and God is speaking through Malachi to call them back into relationship with him. And so in drawing them back, he starts off with these surprising words that you already know because I've read them to you.

I have loved you, says God.

I have loved you.

God loves his people. Now there are many books and thousands of pages written, probably thousands of books written about the love of God. Some things that I read this week deny that there's any emotion connected with this love.

Some people can't stand the thought of a God who exhibits emotion and so I read things this week that it's merely his choice, says some scholars, his choosing to do good to.

You.

That's it.

There's no feeling there.

That's what some would say.

Others on the other side of the spectrum would read between the lines and believe that God is capricious and overly emotional, maybe even foolish in his love for sinful humanity.

What a sap.

That expresses itself, by the way, as a very popular notion in our culture. God is a pushover. How many of you have ever heard that God is love expressed in supporting whatever a person wants? You heard that?

Because God would never say no to you. God is a sap or a big pushover. It's a pretty common thought in our day and age. All he is is love. That's not accurate. Did God say he is love?

Yeah.

But he also has justice. He has mercy. But he also has wrath. And that's from the word, not because I want it that way, it's just the way that he's revealed himself. That's the way he spoke of himself.

It's dangerous for us to merely take the word love as we experience it in a fallen world, by the way, and apply it to God. And that's where some of these people on the lack of emotion side are trying to run with.

It.

Because we could make him too much like us. We could make a God in our own image who is faulty in his love, is weak in his love.

Because we are.

So if we make a God in our image, he's not going to love perfectly, right? See, if we just look at the people around us and the way that we love and the way that they love us, there's a brokenness to that.

But his love is perfect. His love is pure compassion, is giving, it is generous, it is beyond any faithfulness or kindness that you and I will ever experience from any other. But I do not believe that God's love is without risk.

I believe that God risks. It's not as if some kind of, it's not as if his love is some kind of measured gift that he willingly gives with no hope of return. He hopes for return. He wants us to love him back.

He wants that. He initiates the love. He's the starter of it. He's the originator of it. We love him because he first loved us. It's his love that initiates, but does he want something in return? Yeah, he does, he wants our love, and to say that God's love is without risk is to miss.

The point.

I mean, the cross was a big risk. Put it all out there for us.

Paid the ultimate price for us. God's love does cost him, and God does want people to love him in return. So, after all the history of forsaking their God, after all the idolatry, all the immorality, all the rejection of him, he says those three words, I love you.

And the Hebrew tense is one that indicates, we don't like to add tenses to the translation, and so it's a little bit of a tricky verb tense in Hebrew that doesn't really translate easily over into English, but it has an ongoing attitude towards it.

So, when you read, I have loved you, well, if you say that to your spouse, how's that going to strike your spouse? I loved you. I mean, I said it on our wedding day, right? Isn't that what it kind of sounds like?

Like, I told you I loved you.

I'll tell you again if anything changes. That's not a good practice, guys, okay, or girls. But, it's an ongoing action, so it's I have loved you and still do, is the notion behind this. I have loved you and I still do.

Not saying I used to love you. I am in an ongoing relationship committed to your well-being. But the people of Israel respond in verse 2 with a jaded and cynical response. Do you see it there in verse 2?