13 “You
have spoken arrogantly against me,” says the Lord.
“Yet you ask,
‘What have we said against you?’
14 “You have said, ‘It is futile
to serve God. What do we gain by carrying out his requirements
and going about like mourners before the Lord Almighty? 15 But now we call the arrogant
blessed. Certainly evildoers
prosper, and even when they put God to the test, they get away with it.’”
16 Then
those who feared the Lord talked with each other, and
the Lord listened and heard. A scroll of remembrance
was written in his presence concerning those who feared the Lord and honored his name.
17 “On the day when I act,” says the Lord Almighty, “they will be my
treasured possession. I will spare
them, just as a father has compassion and spares his son who serves him. 18 And you will again see the distinction between
the righteous and the wicked, between those who serve God and those who do not.
The book of Malachi was written to the people of God, those who had
returned from the Exile and were living in Jerusalem and Judea. They were
supposed to be His people, but in this passage, God is changing some
definitions of what it means to belong to Him.
In the first post on Malachi, the people seemed to just be
disillusioned, and confused about God, but here they are called “arrogant” and “wicked.”
Again, they don’t understand who God is. He is the God who chooses the younger
over the old, who delights in using weak people to humble the strong, and who
is “the compassionate and gracious God,
slow to anger and abounding in love and faithfulness (Exodus 34:6).”
Just this morning I was reading Psalm 50:16-21 which says:
“But to the wicked person, God says: “What
right have you to recite my laws or take my covenant on your lips? You hate my
instruction and cast my words behind you. When you see a thief, you join with
him; you throw in your lot with adulterers. You use your mouth for evil and
harness your tongue to deceit. You sit and testify against your brother and
slander your own mother’s son. When you did these things and I kept silent, you
thought I was exactly like you. But now I rebuke you, and set my accusations
before you.”
God doesn’t demand immediate justice, recompense, and punishment for
our sins. He gives us many chances to repent and turn from evil. If we do, then
we are forgiven and redeemed. If we do not, well we ultimately must face His judgment
for all we have done, but the wicked and evil don’t EVER get away with
ANYTHING. Their day is coming. The people who say these things are called “arrogant”
and “wicked” because they claim to know better than God, and therefore know all
about God. So they say that He isn’t powerful, He doesn’t care, and He isn’t
worth worshiping.
Such people are not truly part of God’s treasured possession. In Exodus
19:5-6 God told the people coming out of Egypt: “Now therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant,
you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples, for all the earth is
mine; and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.” This
was promised to Abraham’s descendants, the nation of Israel as a whole. Now
Malachi indicates that just because a person is an Israelite by heritage, it
does not automatically qualify them as being one of God’s chosen people. The
people are talking to one another and agreeing with each other that it is not
worth their time or effort to serve God.
But not all of them. There was a remnant of faithful people who refused
to partake in these arguments and “sought to deepen their fellowship with each other
and reassure themselves of God’s justice.”[1] They
refused to believe or partake in the cultural shift occurring and instead clung
to their values and the truth they knew about God. Instead they wrote a “scroll
of remembrance” which was probably a declaration similar to the one Joshua
makes in Joshua 24:15, “As for me and my
house, we will serve the
Lord.” For these people, salvation was
promised. God indicates that in the future there will be a very clear
distinction made between the wicked, who don’t serve Him, and the righteous,
who do serve Him. This theme is continued in the Gospels where Jesus speaks of
separating the wheat and the tares (Matthew 13:24-30), and the sheep and the
goats (Matthew 24:31-34). Going through the motions of worship, sacrifice,
tithing, and attending church doesn’t save anyone. Pursing God and holiness is
what brings salvation.
Malachi has moved from declaring the sins of the priests and people, to
reminding them that God is still faithful and still wishes to bless them, to
exposing the hopeless arrogance of some of the people and the resilient
faithfulness of others. This is the same world we live in today. There are some
who are Christian’s by culture and upbringing, but who live in direct
disobedience and rejection of God’s laws and commands. There are others who
attend church regularly, but still miss the mark by being two-faced and
insincere in their worship. And there are those who fervently desire holiness
and endure suffering in order to change their lives to be more like Christ’s.
As a coach, I sometimes tell my gymnasts that I harp on them and am
always pushing them and giving correction and criticisms in their skills
because I want them to be able to execute those skills perfectly. Its hard
work, and sometimes it means they get stuck on a single problem in one skill.
But I also tell them that if I didn’t give them those corrections and criticism,
they should be worried, because then it would mean I didn’t care about their
success, goals, and dreams. I feel that God works in a similar fashion. Those
who pursue Him seem to suffer more because they have allowed Him to make
corrections in their lives, attitudes, and behaviors so that they will be more
like Christ, who is the standard for perfection. Those who don’t care about God
and His will seem to live and easy life, free of much suffering because they
are not pursing something greater than themselves and their own feeble, earthly
desires.
[1]
James T. H. Adamson, “Malachi,” in The
New Bible Commentary: Revised, edited by D. Guthrie and J. A. Motyer, (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdman’s Publishing Co, 1970), 809.
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