Malachi 3

The previous chapter ends with the people daring to ask why they had not seen the justice of God, referring to the materialistic demands they imagined the Covenant promised. This was a century before the arrival of Hellenism, yet see the stage already set for full-blown Pharisaism in the attitude Malachi confronted here. The most obvious element missing here is the timeless perspective of God’s revelation to the Hebrew people. There is no sense of the ancient legacy, no commitment to future generations. There is only the immediate “gimme” of arrogant fools seeking creature comforts. They evaluate the terms of the Covenant on mere profit and loss. What Jesus called “serving Mammon” is painfully obvious already.
People who cannot see beyond their immediate generation are trapped; they are utterly incapable of understanding God’s revelation. The Law of Moses makes no sense whatsoever without seeing the divine imperatives calling to you across several centuries. It’s also impossible to understand the Law if you fail to embrace the whole nation as your blood kin and resident aliens as potential family. This is all one team, not mere scenery, not competitors or threats. The widow in your village was your grandmother; the orphans your nephews and nieces. Allowing them to suffer was an inexcusable disgrace and personal insult to God. Getting this right was the very first and foremost expression of God’s justice. Allowing this to decay across generations was to desert utterly the entire purpose for calling them God’s Chosen.
God often ignores the human sense of time as a pointed lesson we are wrong for clinging to it. Malachi begins this chapter by describing something which does not come about literally until some four centuries later. God speaks through Malachi as if this is just a few days away. That is a critical point: Learn to think long term, not just your own pitiful life span. At the same time, if the people could just recover their Ancient Hebrew outlook, perhaps it could be sooner. What He offers here is a personal visit. Would they be ready to receive Him as befitting His Lordship? If they take too long making ready, He’ll come at His own time, and it won’t be pleasant.
We all know John the Baptist was the Messenger and his call to repentance was largely ignored. Thus, when God actually came in the guise of Jesus Christ, they all missed out on the blessing, only to catch the damnation of wrath a generation later as the existing political entity of Judah ended once and for all. Purifying a people like gold and silver could easily mean most of them consumed in the fire. He rattles of representative sins: efforts to bypass God’s revelation through divination, infidelity, breaking oaths, and those who deny their social responsibilities. All of these constitute ugly attacks on the social stability that the Law of Moses was supposed to encourage. That social stability and shalom was their means to God’s glory.
Malachi asserts they need to repent, but they ask just what it means to return to God. He refers to His people as sneaking into His treasury and plundering His possessions. They can’t imagine what he is talking about. So he reminds them they have refused to support the needy. A critical portion of the Mosaic Tithe Law was every third year, bringing the tithe of produce (crops and domestic animals) to the village storehouse. That collection was used to support the Levites, the poor and nomads wandering through the area (Deuteronomy 14:22-29). While the people may have been obeying the other parts of tithing obligations, they were missing this one. For this cause, they would be suffering higher natural losses on par with the Gentiles who didn’t know Jehovah. Repent and God would restrain such losses, and make them stand out as uniquely prosperous among the nations around them.
They have the gall to defame God, but deny they ever criticize Him. He warns that their phony ritual acts of mourning show no real sense of sorrow for sin. They don’t see how it makes any difference, refusing to understand the whole system of ritual sacrifice was precisely designed to cultivate a sense of the fallen human nature. Those sacrifices were supposed to call attention to how it feels to stand in the presence of God. If that doesn’t make you tremble with fear, you deserve the full measure of His wrath in Hell.
Something calls the spirit of the prophet. Somewhere out there, some place away from this present company of agnostics, there had to be a few people who really and truly cared what God thought. He’s not seeing a concrete vision within time and space reality, but a spiritual truth that God will never allow His revelation to go without a living witness. Somewhere there will always be a remnant of true believers who will associate together and seek God’s face. He’s keeping track of them, recognizes them as His kind of people. When the day comes He calls the righteous to His final gathering, they’ll be among the invited family guests. Meanwhile, there will be some unique sense in how He treats them in this life, too.