Book of Malachi - Ch. 1, Vs. 9-11 (01/29/2023)

Park Meadows Church

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Good morning, everybody. Ten after, all right, it goes by fast.

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Y 'all go, y 'all go start distracting. All right.

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It's already going. I took care of it. Alrighty guys. Well, this will be a fun day.

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We got the Kings in the house over here. Always awesome to have you guys got all the instruments up on the stage, so that's pretty exciting.

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Yeah. A couple of weeks ago, John and Randy, we started Malachi and we've been very slowly trucking along there.

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We haven't quite found a very significant strategist yet, just a couple of verses at a time, but we started a new section last week.

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We moved on from the topic of God's love for his people, which was the first five verses of Malachi, the first chapter, starting in chapter,

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I'm sorry, verse six of chapter one, it begins a new section specifically talking about the sins of the priests during this time, which is a big, a big part of the overall book.

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It really kind of sets the foundation for more rebuke that will be to come. But it started with the priests, and so we started verse six last week and I think got through verse eight.

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So we're just going to pick it up at verse nine. So again, that's Malachi chapter one, verse nine.

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And in the verses we covered last week, it was all about just the defiled, polluted offerings that the priests were putting on the

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Lord's table, his altar, and Malachi was bringing that to their attention.

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In fact, I'm going to go and read those two verses just for context, because it'll be important as we start with verse nine today.

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So I'll go ahead and start in verse, I'll go, I'll start in verse seven. It says, ye polluted bread upon mine altar, and ye say, wherein have we polluted thee?

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And that ye say, the table of the Lord is contemptible. So we talked about last week, this is literally the, the, the word for bread there literally just means food.

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And so Malachi here is using this as an analogy of, you know, you, you wouldn't put polluted food on the table of your earthly master.

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Why are you doing that on the altar of your God? And then they ask, how have we polluted thee?

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And it says, you say, my table is contemptible. And we talked about that last week as well. It's this, they, they had contempt for his very altar of sacrifices.

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Verse eight says, and if he offered the blind for sacrifice, is it not evil?

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And if he offered the lame and sick, is it not evil? Offer it now unto thy governor, will he be pleased with thee or accept thy person?

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Sayeth the Lord of hosts. So again, are you going to go give a blind, lame, sick offering to your, your earthly ruler, this heathen

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Persian governor that you have, you wouldn't do that, but you're doing it to your God. It makes no sense.

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Okay. Back there. I'm assuming that was Winnie's bottle.

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It's okay, buddy. He seems okay with it. He's like, eh, I'll move on. So anyway, so that was last week.

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Okay. So that was verse eight. So now let's move on to verse nine, which is where we're picking it up. And that gives us a little bit of context for this next kind of directive slash question for Malachi to these priests.

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It says in verse nine, and now I pray you beseech God that he will be gracious unto us.

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This hath been by your means. Will he regard your persons? Sayeth the Lord of hosts.

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Okay. So that's kind of an interesting verse. A lot of commentaries are a little bit mixed on it. Some believe that Malachi here, of course, it's, it's

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God speaking through Malachi. But a lot of people believe that what Malachi is doing here is that he's literally in treating the priests to start turning from their ways and to, as it says in the verse, beseech

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God that he will be gracious. In other words, people interpret that some commentaries interpret that is, is

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Malachi is kind of shifting the tone and is now humbly asking these profane priests that have been defiling the sacrifices to turn their ways, to beseech

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God so that he'll be gracious to us. But others, other commentaries believe that Malachi is actually in a kind of ironic form rebuking the priests even further with this directive and with the followup question.

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When he says, beseech God that he'd be gracious unto us, will he regard your persons?

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In other words, it's, it's more of a rhetorical ironic question because they know the state that they're in as well in that they, at this point,

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I mean, they've already been rebuked in verses six through eight, enough to know that they're not in a place to where they are going to so easily be able to beseech

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God. And so many believe it has more of an ironic tone to it.

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So the priests at this point, do you want to take that angle, which I do believe makes the most sense given the context that we've read so far and that is to come literally in within the next verse, the priest had strayed so far from their duties and what they represented that they were completely unworthy at this point of their otherwise honorable position as priests to beseech

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God. These were profane and vain men who, as we have already covered, totally polluted the entire edifice of God's worship, his ordained worship up to this point, they were in a sense going through some motions, but even the motions they were going through were totally against, as we covered last week, the

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Levitical law in terms of the sacrifices that they were even offering. And so because of that, they were undermining the entirety of their religion all the way to the people.

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So it was very much like a top -down collapse of what they were supposed to be doing, starting with the priests who were meant to be kind of the examples, the messengers on God's behalf, the ones going through the

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Levitical law in terms of sacrifices and temple worship and so on and so forth.

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And so they're asked again, I believe ironically here, to be these intercessors and mediators between God and the people.

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But of course, it would have been impossible for them to do that, for them to fill that role at this time, given their profane actions, their profane attitudes up to this point.

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And again, the very next verse is going to kind of confirm that, that they're not really in a place to do, to beseech

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God so that he would be gracious into them. So that's where I tend to agree that this is more ironic than it is like a humble request from Malachi to the priests, asking them to turn their ways on a dime and get the

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Lord to be gracious to the people. But despite the fact that the people had at this point collectively abandoned the statutes of God and submerged themselves into all kinds of wickedness, as we will see more and more as we go throughout this book, it should have been the priests of all people, it should have been the priests that devoted themselves with reverence, of course, toward the responsibilities of their calling and acted as examples for the people to turn back themselves.

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Even if you want to look at it in terms of the people are all wicked, the people are out there totally gone astray, totally irreverent, they don't care at all about proper worship if they're worshiping at all.

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Even with all of those people aside, you should still have expected the priests to come in and do everything that they could in terms of being the example, in terms of keeping these very specific laws that they were given.

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In Leviticus, we looked at a number of those last week, that they were doing the exact opposite of.

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So you would expect at least the priests to have been, you know, striving for what they knew they were supposed to do, but even they had totally kind of fallen off the cliff, so to speak.

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Again, it was very much a top -down collapse. Yeah, John. So what you're saying is their position doesn't quite correct?

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No, the fact that they had this title, by default, isn't what was going to be their redeeming qualities, if you want to put it that way.

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They had stuff to do. Like, yes, they had a title, but they had a job to do, and it came with a very specific job description.

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One of the most specific job descriptions that was ever given, the entire book of Leviticus and more.

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And, I mean, in just a matter of a couple of verses last week, again, this was the majority of last week's lesson, just in the matter of a couple of verses, we're given just a very explicit example of how opposite they were in acting these duties that they had, these jobs, the job description that they had.

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And so you'd think that they were, you know, that typically you would have hoped that the priests were going to be some kind of example.

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On the contrary, it was possibly the beginning of the domino effect. We don't really know.

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It begins by talking about the sins of the priests here in Malachi, so maybe you could presume that the wickedness of the people, the irreverence, and the lost faith began with the priests.

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I'm not sure. It doesn't explicitly say that, but it's certainly starting with the priests here either way, which gives us a pretty good message off the top that they are held to a higher standard and are being addressed first because of the responsibilities that they were failing to enact at this point.

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So God had literally chosen these guys, the Levites, the priests, over their brethren for this incredibly special and important duty.

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And for this reason, they, of all people, they especially should have been dedicating themselves to him with not only love, which we talked about last week as well, but fear.

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Of all of the people of the tribes of Israel, the

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Levites should have had an incredible amount of fear that maybe you could argue the others wouldn't even know to have because of the job they had, because of the responsibilities that they had, and the punishments that were attached to failing to do the job the right way.

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And so of all people, they should have been approaching this with total fear, but because they didn't seem to even consider their positional authority in this context, kind of going back to John's point, to turn the people back toward God, the irony directed to them, it makes total sense.

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They could not have beseeched God because of the position they were in, as if they could at this point, as we're about to see in verse 10, pacify his wrath because they weren't any better than the people that all of the rest of the people that were totally immersed in sin as well.

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So they weren't in a place where they could beseech God, even if they wanted to, which is kind of an even more striking thought.

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And on the contrary, Malachi here rhetorically asks, will he regard your persons? We're about to find out if that's true or not.

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Of course, in verse 9 alone, there's already an implied no, given the ironic tone behind the question.

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But let's look at verse 10. It says, who is there even among you that would shut the doors for not?

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Neither do you kindle fire on mine altar for not. I have no pleasure in you, sayeth the

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Lord of hosts. Neither will I accept an offering at your hand. So were they at a place to beseech

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God in verse 9? Yeah, dad. This is so interesting, this lesson, because on the way home last night.

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Yeah, it was. They figured out how to put more and more cattle on that thing.

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I'm just cramming people in airplanes and you have no space and there's people everywhere. It's just terrible.

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They're all seem to keep your distance from us. But this is so funny because you're all sitting in the middle of right behind us.

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We're two guys, probably 28 year old, not that problem, but my age viewpoint, they were quite young.

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So the priest, well, and the one behind is a

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Methodist minister, straight out of seminary. And they sat there like the best buddy.

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I wanted so bad to turn around and ask the one behind me, what did John Wesley say about the

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Pope? I just wanted to ask him that. So he'd have to answer in front of his buddy. Yeah, but I didn't do it.

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Because my Bible said a blessing to peacemakers. Dan puts his headphones back in.

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I'm trying to grab some kind of blessing. Anyway, so the whole time, it reminds me so much of these people you're reading about.

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Well, they won't do anything except for money, right? And what this young guy, this kid, and they're sitting there talking, all they talk about, they did not mention the scripture for one moment.

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Charles was about to keep, he was sitting there and said, do you hear noise cancelling earphones or something? Yeah, she was just,

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I can't stand any more of this, so I found her some noise cancelling earplugs.

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I can't believe you didn't have them already just for this very purpose. The whole time, they're talking about problems now that we didn't use to have, and we have to deal with it in truth.

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They're never talking about the gender thing, and the worse than that thing, the whole thing, none of that.

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And so they never talked about anything but that. And maybe that was appropriate since one of them was a priest, but they kept talking about truth.

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And you have to bring it, bring truth to these issues, these new things. So it's going to be new truths.

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And not one time did any one of them mention that the Bible is the authority of truth.

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They never mentioned the Bible. So what the truth was, they were talking about these presbyters with maybe 200 laymen and 70 elders.

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And this was the Methodists. Oh, I know. Well, yeah. What they do is they get together once a year and they decide what the truth is.

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And I was sitting there listening to that for two hours going home, and now you can preach to all these guys. Things never change.

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It's the same thing. Did the Methodist guy bring up anything about all of the local

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Methodist churches breaking off the Methodist convention because of the homosexual thing?

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Yeah, that's crazy. That was a bad thing. OK, yeah, well, that's right. Yeah, it's bad to him. Right. You guys can literally drive around.

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And, you know, the scarlet, the scarlet thread thing that's on the cross of every

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Methodist church. If you go drive around, you'll start seeing Methodist churches that have taken the scarlet thing off.

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They still have the cross up. They took the scarlet thread or scarf or whatever it is off because that's the that's the

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Methodist logo. But so many of them have broken off of whatever the head Methodist convention is or whatever.

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I don't know if it's similar to the Baptist. It's because the Methodist convention had voted that they were going to allow homosexual pastors or priests or whatever they call it in Methodist, whatever, as well as, you know, condoning same sex marriages and all that kind of stuff under the main convention.

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And so that alienated probably, well, I was going to say most it probably sadly enough, it might not even be most, but a big portion of the

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Methodist local bodies, because they're like, that's not scriptural. We're not doing that. And so, you know, drive around town and you'll see they're taking that off.

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It has broken them off into four groups. Wow. You have the conservatives who refuse to do fellowship with the others.

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That's the people in our area. Yes. And then they have the conservatives who disagree with them, but want to go to church with them.

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Right. And then they have liberals that won't have anything to do with conservatives, and then they have the liberals that still want to go to church with them.

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Yeah. So there's four groups now. Oh, there's one issue. It's a pretty big issue. I'm sitting here thinking like, this one thing about how to know each other.

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You just met from Florida to Texas. All you're talking about is inclusivity and gender ideology.

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And you're both preachers. Yeah. And Charlotte, they're going to speak to a large number of people today.

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Well, I don't get to actually, but I will say hi.

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I'll say hi. Oh, yeah. John's on the hot seat today. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's not just the

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Methodist church. I'm seeing a lot of different denominations. It's just that's a big one right now.

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Yeah. I mean, it's only a matter of time before. I mean, there's already so many different Baptist conventions, but it's only a matter of time before most of them.

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Goodness gracious. Wow. So you got you have.

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You have the you have a priest and a what are Methodist are they preachers, are they pastors?

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What are they? What do you call them? Seminarian. OK, so you have a

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Methodist elder, Catholic priest spending however long talking about relative morality, situational ethics.

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I mean, but well, they're saying truth, but they mean the two former things. Go ahead,

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Mimi. Well, this goes back to the lesson when these men of the church.

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Right. Bring their offering of God's word. They do it without fear. Well, and they don't fear the

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Lord. And that's why they continue to. That's why there's this falling away. Sure. And this is a great story that they had brought forth because I want to pull parallels out of this book.

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And we're going to see some really what I what to me pop out is really striking parallels, kind of similar to the

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Obadiah study. We did not that long ago. And the story that they had just told is a good kind of real time example, just a fresh example of your exact point there,

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Mimi. There's they have the title to John's point. They have been given in the context of the pre -Somalica here, they've been given this very specific title responsibilities to come with this very specific job description.

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In the case of these priests and elders, they supposedly, quote unquote, been called to these things.

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So, you know, if you're if you claim to have that calling, you better bear the fruit that comes with it as well.

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And that's not happening. Like you said, there's no fear behind it, which is the same that we're dealing with, the same situation we're dealing with here with these priests.

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And what is the response both to these priests here and to the guys that dad is talking about back there and to any other minister, elder, pastor, priest, whatever it may be, that puts their concern over how to.

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Shove the scriptures into the new sieve of truth, they call it truth, but again, it's really just subjective morality or whatever you want to call it, that's their only concern.

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What is God's response to them? And it's right there in verse 10, even among you. Well, actually, let me just skip to the next the second part.

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I have no pleasure in you, saith the Lord. There's step number one, he has zero pleasure in them as people, and even if they want to go through the effort of attempting to do something to please him, neither will

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I accept an offering at your hand. And so that's the situation that these guys, whether it's the guys that dad's talking about the back or the priests and Malachi, have put themselves in.

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Go ahead, dad. Oh, great. It's painful.

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You know, wait on the baggage. Charles. Two men walk past her and they're talking.

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And one of them said, yeah, he's got his friends, but he had a buddy who's talking about, yeah, Jeff was church and last week in the pulpit, the pastor said, yeah, well, abortion is a is a complex issue.

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So he went up to me when the church was over and said, pastor, so are you saying it's complex to you or that it's a complex issue?

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The pastor said, well, it's complex to me. And he said, it's not complex. And the pastor said, well, no, it's complex.

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He said, I'm out of here. He said, I'll never be back here. Well, at least mom. That discussion was going on, you know, when she walked past these two men.

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So at least they were on the right side. Right. I was about to say, at least she caught ear of someone standing up to something.

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My word. Well, think about the dozens upon dozens upon dozens of examples that could fit these just couple of verses of a profane leader.

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You know, if you want to generalize a little bit more, extrapolate it into our time. You have a leader that is in a spiritual leader, supposedly.

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They has a specific and I mean, the epistles, Timothy's and Titus, I mean, they lay out a job description as well.

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It's a little bit different than these priests had, but they still have a higher calling. And in then verse 10 says, so they are not doing that.

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And then you have the next verse that says, I have no pleasure in you and I will not accept your thing. Think about how many dozens of examples we could talk about that would fit that framework, whether it be a pastor getting up and saying it's a complex issue or the guys that were sitting behind dad, only talking about how to be as inclusive as possible to gender dysphoric individuals that need, that do need help, but not what they're talking about.

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Go ahead. It was so funny that the priest, maybe 30 years old, he said,

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I can't keep up with all the different designations. It's embarrassing.

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It is so embarrassing. I was reading,

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I was reading this tweet the other day to Jenny, to Katie and Dave over there, from the Associated Press talking about the need to avoid the,

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I wish I could remember exactly how it's worded, the something, ter, oh goodness, what's the word?

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I'm going to have to look it up in a minute. And they were basically telling you not to use the word the anymore in certain contexts.

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In other words, the college educated or, or the, the church goers or the,

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I got to just, I'll pull it up in a minute. If we have time, it's crazy. So they go, they, they, and they threw, this is really funny.

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They've thrown in all these examples. You, you know, you shouldn't say the, this person, the, this type of person, the, this, and they threw in the

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French and then they kept going. Then this is the Associated Press. This isn't some parody account.

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This isn't some individual trying their best to be inclusive. This is the Associated Press. Then they do a follow -up tweet saying, we apologize for the offensive nature of our inclusion of the

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French. In our last week, we realized this could be offensive and damaging to blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

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We, a updated tweet is coming. And so I read this to, I'll read the exact thing a little bit.

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Cause it's just too good. It's too good not to laugh at, but I'm reading this and I'm thinking, this is the position they're putting themselves in where they can't even keep all the rules that they are setting for themselves.

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And it's, it's such a rapid rate. Even the ones trying their hardest, like the priest or the Associated Press can't keep up and they are embarrassing themselves.

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They are showing the world, uh, just how, well, yeah, just how dumb they are.

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I don't know. Huh? Eventually we'll come full circle back to that, where that's the thing you're supposed to do.

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Probably. It's just, it's just crazy.

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Blah, blah, blah. I mean, Biden has done that too. Clinton has done that too.

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They don't get in trouble though. We just brush past that. But, uh, but point being is someday we'll probably get to the point where you is the most inclusive.

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And so therefore we should be referring to everyone as you people. I mean, that's, that's how, uh, stupid and ironic it all is.

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But anyway, yes, dad, you can't even keep up with it. No, go figure. There are 118 different gender option choices that you can select in California for getting state money for being of a persecuted minority.

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All you have to do is select one of the 118 genders that they have on the form. And then you can get an extra couple grand a month of taxpayer money just because you're part of this, uh, persecuted group, by the way, some of the quote unquote genders on that list are like angry, like that's a gender.

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And I know y 'all probably think I'm just making stuff up on the fly. Just sound crazy. I'm not joking. Like I was looking at this a few days ago.

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I'll have to find that too. And show everyone it's really crazy stuff. Yeah.

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I mean, it's literally being cut to cut the shreds. Um, and it makes no sense. That was another thing.

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Is it totally, someone was pointing this out recently. It totally defies all of the like laws of, of good writing.

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Like you want to be as concise and as, um, to the point as possible, but now what they're doing is they're taking phrases.

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Like, you can't say the French and instead you have to say people of French descent and you're adding all of these different words to it.

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And you said, they're not only chopping up the language, but they are butchering the like laws. If you want to call it that,

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I don't know what they're the laws of writing, whatever, you know? Yeah.

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I mean, rules of grammar, general, like a good etiquette for writing. Like for your reader, you want to get to the point anyways, we can digress,

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I suppose. Uh, but I mean, it is right on topic. I mean, let's just keep reading for a second, because this is going to get really interesting.

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And by the way, we're not even to the people yet. I mean, that comes later in chapter two. Uh, we're still just talking about the priest here.

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Um, okay. So let me reread verse 10, because this is really interesting stuff.

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It says who there, even among you that who is there even among you that would shut the doors for not neither do you kindle fire on mine altar for not.

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I have no pleasure in you say the Lord of hosts. Neither will I accept an offering at your hand. Now, really quick, that first that first phrase in verse 10 is a little bit funny.

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At least it was to be another way. You can read that, uh, is where it says, who is there even among you who would shut the doors for not in light of fire for not another way you could read that is who among you will shut the doors of my temple so that you cannot kindle fire on mine altar in vain.

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So he's literally what what they're being told here is just shut it down because I would rather you shut the doors of the temple and not go in there anymore than to continue to sacrifice lame, deaf, blind animals, sacrifices on my altar, polluted, defiled, just stop altogether.

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Um, and then he goes on to tell them, I have no pleasure in you say the Lord of hosts. Neither will I accept the offering at your hand.

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So to further emphasize the point, in my opinion, that that verse nine does kind of bring an ironic tone into it when they say, go beseech

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God that he may be gracious to us, uh, is that Malachi is now saying that the entirety of the temple worship might as might as well be shut down because what they were doing at this time was totally ineffective.

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Anyway, the, the sacrifices they were putting on the altar on the table were being rejected every time they did it because it was in total opposition to the types of sacrifices, the order of sacrifices they were given in Leviticus chapter 22, which we looked at last week.

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So it was even useless to the point where lighting the fires on the altar, it made zero sense even to do that because God would not accept the offerings from them anyway.

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So you might as well shut the door. He asks who among you would shut the doors for not the priests here conducted themselves in the most shameful way possible.

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Last week, we talked about the reality that they should have been utterly shamed when they were asked the questions in verses six through eight, you honor your father, your earthly father.

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Where is the, where's the honor of your heavenly father? I'm paraphrasing, but they were asked these questions that in and of itself should have been totally shameful.

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But at this point, the way that they're, you know, they're the way they're acting, the way they are conducting themselves is the most shameful way possible.

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And as a result, the people, again, who we're going to get to specifically later became hardened through the example of the priests rather than think about this for a second, the priests being a good example in the people sending in spite of that example.

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So you have two possibilities there. Like, obviously, to my point earlier, the priests could have been going through the biblical, you know,

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Mosaic law and the people still in spite of that sin, in which case they are held responsible.

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But rather what happened was, again, it seems implied to me pretty heavily, given the order that Malachi structured here, that it started with the priests and that through their example, the people were then hardened, which is a really crazy thing.

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Think about and think about the contrast there with some of the prophets leading up to this.

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You have Jeremiah in the book of Lamentations literally asking the

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Lord, why is this happening to us? Why is it happening to me? And in Lamentations three, he starts basically singling himself out as if God is only punishing him.

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And the reason they're being punished, which is occurring through, I believe, is the Babylonian takeover and the eventual exile and all that kind of stuff, was because of the sins of the people.

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But you still had Jeremiah over there being an example, being a good example. He was God's man. And the people in spite of Jeremiah were acting so sinful to the point where God brought in Babylon to punish them.

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What's happening here is that it started with God's men, the priests, presumably, and then that therefore hardened the hearts of the rest of the people.

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And now collectively, all of them are in this state of wickedness. All right, verse 11, for from the rising of the sun, they all listen really closely to this one, for from the rising of the sun, even into the going down of the same, my name shall be great among the

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Gentiles, and in every place incense shall be offered unto my name, and a pure offering for my name shall be great among the heathen, saith the

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Lord of hosts. What is that talking about? In the context of the priests and their wickedness and God's disappointment of them, you have verse 11 come in.

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What do you guys think that's talking about right there? Of course, the Gentiles, who they consider dogs.

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Say, start over, Pop Pop. Then they, the priests, were worse than the Gentiles, who they consider dogs.

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That may be a part of it. What were you saying, John? If you don't want what I'm giving, I'll give it away to somebody else.

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If you don't want what I'm giving, I'll give it to someone else. It's also in Jerusalem.

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Sure. And somebody will be Gentile. Yeah, well, okay, so Dad says this is a foreviewer prophecy of the

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Gentiles in the millennial kingdom, which is yet to come. Don't you think it could be a near prophecy of the first advent of the

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Gentiles? Well, okay, I tend to believe it's both. But I think that this is specifically about the first advent, although you could obviously extend it from that point all the way to the end.

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Now, okay, so I cut to - I love that, too. I love that meaning is first coming.

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Yeah. Because that is kind of funny, isn't it? In the Old Testament, Jerusalem may not, may just be the last book of the

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Bible. It is, yeah. It is. I know it's not different. Well, in the historical timeline, it is the last.

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Yeah, yeah, historical. Even according to theirs. Okay, I'm not going to be able to get to some of this stuff today that I'm very excited about because it has to do with some of what we were just talking about.

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But maybe we can tease it just a little bit in the last couple of minutes here. So, Pop Pop said, I forgot how you worded it,

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Pop Pop. Basically, their view of the Gentiles is they're the dogs. And because of the way you're acting, I'll just bring them in place of you.

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And John kind of said something similar there. Dad is talking about this being a prophecy of what's to come. A couple of weeks ago, we were looking at the, before Dad left, we were looking at verse 3 of the same book.

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And Esau have I hated. We spent a number of weeks on that. And we read some commentaries that, at least in the opinion of everyone in this room, and in the opinion of several other great commentators as well, kind of butchered the interpretation of what that meant, if you guys recall.

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They put the actions of Esau preceding the hatred of God. We went through all that. Well, here's another example of some really interesting commentary that, again,

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I think you could just use the context to figure it out. But I just want to read it anyway.

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I'm not going to actually read commentaries, but I want to give you the idea. So there's a lot of debate in this verse. Go figure. You read a verse that seems pretty clear in the debate royals and rails on.

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But there's some debate as to whether the phrase incense shall be offered into my name is future tense or present tense.

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That's the debate. Now, in the KJV, you can see clearly that the translation was rendered in the future tense because they inserted the words shall be something to look forward to.

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So the KJV translators, you know, it was future tense for them. Um, but many commentaries and even some of the newer translations render it present tense in the way they'll they'll do it.

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The way they'll translate it is incense is brought unto my name as if to say that what

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God is saying here is that in this moment, in real time, in verse 11, at the time this is being written,

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I am going to start accepting the offerings of the Gentiles because you guys are failing me so much and they will bring into me a pure offering.

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Now, it gets pretty interesting here. So the word offered, which is kind of the word in question here, it's the

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Hebrew word nagash, and it's a passive participle. This this is something the word offered is something that was basically meant to be the

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Gentiles giving these offerings was validating the the idea that this was ordained of God before the priests and the people even fell into their state of wickedness.

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No, they weren't. This is exactly. Now, again, the so the debate here is,

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OK, so now does this mean the Gentiles are about to like here in the next few verses or not in the in the verses, but in the in the timeline of this when this book was written, are they about to step in and God start accepting their offerings then?

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Or is it talking about Jesus's first advent in the Gentiles coming into the fold after Pentecost, you know, in the church age beginning?

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And so the first thing with it being a passive participle is that it was ordained by God. It was before the priests even started sinning and needed a replacement, so to speak, if you just want to put it in those terms for a second.

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But even more, if you were to render this verb in the present tense, it would literally contradict a number of not only other

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Old Testament passages, but it would also contradict the context of Malachi itself, as we're going to get to in a little bit.

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Not today, but at some point in the book, because what happens here is, number one, if you take the word in the present tense, it demands that God would have to have been accepting the then pagan offerings of the

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Gentiles at that time, because Gentile offerings were exclusively pagan at this point in history, no matter what, it literally, unless they were a proselyte, no matter what, they were pagan, anything of the

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Gentiles. And you would have to, it would demand that he would be accepting of the pagan offerings of their pagan rituals, and that he would consider that pure, because it says, where is it in verse, yeah, verse 11, they will offer incense to my name, a pure offering.

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Where is my spot here? Okay, so first of all, I want to take a look at a couple of passages, although we might not have time for it, maybe we can look at one here, that would contradict that reality.

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Um, there are a lot of passages that would, that would make the present tense translation here not make a whole lot of sense.

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And I won't, it's later on in my notes, I believe, but I'll go ahead and cut to the chase. If it were, if you were to render this in the present tense, and God were to be accepting of Gentile offerings at this time, it'd be the only place in the entire

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Bible where he ever accepted a Gentile offering, um, in the context of their pagan rituals, their pagan offerings, and things like that.

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Yes, Mimi? If you continue that, where it says, and, um, for, you know, shall be offered unto my name, and a pure offering, for my name shall be great among the heathen, if it was present tense, then we would have to say that his name at that time was great among the heathen.

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Right. Well, that's what they're getting at, is that it's about, like, those that render the present tense are saying that's about to happen, like, imminently right here.

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And to your point, it doesn't make a lot of sense, especially given what's going on by the time Jesus is on the scene about 400 years later.

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But let's, let's go to Deuteronomy really quick, and we'll end with this, and then we'll just have to, Deuteronomy, uh, let's go to, uh, chapter 13.

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We'll just read this really quick, um, and then we'll save the rest of this verse, uh, because there's a number of other just passages

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I want to look at, um, regarding this idea, but we'll save those for next week.

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Um, go to Deuteronomy 13, uh, starting at verse 6. And so this is just one of the many passages that would contradict the idea that God at any point would be accepting and consider that pure of a

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Gentile's pagan, uh, Gentile's pagan offering, uh, or ritual or any, anything that they might do.

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Um, and Deuteronomy 13, 6, it starts with, if thy brother, the son of thy mother, or thy son, or thy daughter, or the wife of thy bosom, or thy friend, which is thine own soul, entice thee secretly saying, let us go and serve other gods, which thou has not known thou nor thy fathers, namely of the gods of the people, which are round about you, nigh unto thee, or far off from thee.

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So they're totally surrounded by pagans. And it's talking specifically about false gods at this, this point.

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But I mean, what goes hand in hand with the God is the worship of the God, the sacrifices, the offerings to that God, uh, from one end of the earth, even into the other end of the earth.

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And thou shalt not consented to him nor hearken unto him. Neither shalt thou I pity him. Neither shalt thou, neither shalt thou spare, neither shalt thou conceal him, but thou shalt surely kill this person.

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Thou shalt surely kill him. Thine hand shall be the first upon him to put him to death and afterwards, the hand of all the people.

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And thou shalt stone him with stones that he die because he hath sought, listen for a second.

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I know like this sounds harsh and people will use these passages in the old Testament to say, how can you be serving a moral

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God who would be allowing this to happen, allowing Moses to say, you can just kill these people if they do it.

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Think about this. Moses was a prophet. He was an inspired, enlightened, quite literally his face was shining that one time, a man of God who was receiving insight from, from God as to the hearts behind these people that he's saying, you need to get rid of, listen to what he says.

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You need to do this because he that sought to thrust thee away from the

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Lord, thy God, which brought thee out of the land of Egypt from the house of bondage. These are, these are malicious people.

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These are, these are people that are intentionally trying to get you that he's talking to on a path of destruction.

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They are trying to hurt you. Well, from our perspective, we would say, surely not in there.

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And that's why you have the atheist out there saying, how can you serve a God that would allow this? Well, yeah.

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I mean, we don't know the malevolence behind the heart of the person that is trying to entice you to come in and do these things.

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What are they trying to do? They're trying to thrust you away from the Lord, your God, and put you on a path of destruction.

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Yeah, dad. Oh, dad and Winston.

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It will show the very thing you're talking about. It will show why. Yes. Why God did that.

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If you put it, it makes sense. If you take it out of context, it looks evil.

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It just looks like you're stoning some random guy. But on the contrary, in these contexts,

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God gives the spirit behind the person that's doing this. If you don't, if you do not stone them and that he died, he will seek to thrust you away from the

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Lord, thy God. And then he reminds them which brought the out of land of Egypt from the house of bondage. Everything that you have worked hard for, all of the trials and tribulations you've gone through from Exodus to Deuteronomy, all of the wilderness wanderings, everything, all of the bondage that you experienced in Egypt under the fists of Pharaoh would be done away with.

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If you allow this person to run rampant and entice you to come serve other gods and to do these strange pagan rituals and whatever it may be, get rid of that person, because otherwise you're going to end up possibly in an even worse state than you were before.

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Um, and all Israel shall hear in fear and shall do no more any such wickedness as this among you.

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So that's just one of the passages. And we'll get to more next week in terms of like, God takes very seriously anything outside of, uh, of the worship that he ordains for himself.

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He's not going to go just on a whim, accepting the Gentiles, uh, pagan rituals and offerings, whatever it may be, regardless of how disappointed he is with his own priests.

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No, it's future tense. It's talking about when he brings the Gentiles in, and we have some really cool passages we'll look at next week on this topic.

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It's so crazy. It's just inserted right in the middle of this passage in Malachi, and it's a wonderful thing. Yeah, dad. In Hebrew, even in English, it doesn't mean the same as in English, continual action, like I am working.

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It's not like in Hebrew or even Greek so much. It doesn't normally doesn't mean, you know, it just means that it's turned into an adjective or mainly an adjective, and it's grammar more than it is trying to show you what the verb is doing.

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It's not really like that in Hebrew or Greek, but obviously what you pointed out is the only possible meaning for that.

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It is, it either has to be the millennial kingdom, when we will, when

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Gentiles will offer, they'll reinstate the sacrificial system, and it will be memorial, it will be bad for what

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Jesus did, or it has to relate to now in the church age, we say that the kingdom is in our hearts, spiritual kingdom in our hearts, and like we've been studying.

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We are literally studying the offerings of the believer priests. That's the only way Gentiles can do that.

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Well, that's why, I mean, again, it's just nuts that this verse is where it is, because it's a massive topic.

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It just sneaks it in there, and then it continues to talk about other stuff after, but we're going to stick on this verse.

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I got a few more passages we'll read next week. We'll pick it, we'll pick it right up. Oh yeah, go ahead. Well, and again, there are a number of commentators that agree that it's future tense as well, and they point out that very thing.

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They're saying this would be the only place. It makes no sense. It would contradict dozens of others that are saying the exact opposite of this, but yeah, you got to let the

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Bible interpret the Bible, and those other passages make this one more clear, but anywho, I got some more cool stuff on that one we'll cover next week.

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That being said, we'll go ahead and dismiss. Brother John, would you mind dismissing us in prayer? We pray to you for us knowing that we have been saved by you, and it was all of you.

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The only thing we brought was sin. Thank you for that knowledge. That knowledge brings true worship, and we thank you for that.