Tag Archive | Malachi

Journaling through the Bible Chronologically in 2025, Day 273

Sep30

Day 273 – Reading –  Malachi  1 – 4

Malachi is the last prophetic word from God until John the Baptist comes to announce the “Lamb of God/Messiah”; a long 400 years. (Although in the earlier Jewish Bible, Nehemiah was the last book, as it finishes Israel’s history.) 

Malachi’s prophecy was most likely written during the time Nehemiah temporarily returned to Persia after completing and dedicating the wall of Jerusalem.  Remember how angry the cupbearer was when he heard all the ways the Jews had slipped back into their old ways? (Nehemiah 13).

He hurried back to Jerusalem to try and correct the corrupt priests, the failure to support the Temple work by tithing, their working and selling on the Sabbath, and their intermarriage with pagans, even among the priests. Also, their earlier injustice towards the poor.

Malachi also addresses these sins.

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Malachi 1.

“The word of the LORD  to Israel.” And n insightful conversation with them.

The LORD: “I have loved you.”

People: “How have you loved us?”

The LORD: “Is not Esau Jacob’s brother, and I hated Esau.”  See all the ways I have judged and destroyed Esau’s people. I will be angry with THEM forever. But you, O Jacob, I have loved, even in judgment.

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Then God zooms down on the corrupt PRIESTS.

The LORD: “Where is My honor, My fear, O priests who despise My name?”

Priests: “How have we despised Your name?”

The LORD: “By offering polluted food on My altar.”

Priests: “How have we polluted you?”

The LORD: “When you offer blind animals as sacrifice. You offer the lame and sick. I have no pleasure in you, and I will not accept the offering from your hand.  My Name will be great among the NATIONS, and in every place incense and a pure offering will be offered in My Name.”

Priests: “Snort! What a weariness this is.”

The LORD: “Cursed be the cheat who has a male in his flock, and vows it, and yet sacrifices to the Lord what is blemished.”

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Malachi 2.

MORE judgment comes onto the corrupt priests. God gives these men (who are supposed to represent God to the people) a choice – Listen and obey, OR “I will send the curse upon you and will curse your blessings.  I will rebuke your offspring. I will spread dung on your faces and on your offerings. (WHOA!) “And you will be taken away as the waste of the sacrifices is carried outside the camp and burned.”

Originally, God’s covenant with the Levite priests was “one of life and peace.”  As they feared God and stood in awe of His Name, “true instruction was in their mouths.”  They “walked with God in peace and uprightness, and they turned many from iniquities.“

(This is what our church leaders should do today as well.)

Then the LORD blasts those corrupt priests again.  “But YOU have turned aside from the way. YOU have caused many to stumble by your instruction. YOU have corrupted the covenant of Levi.  And so, I will make YOU despised and abased before the people.”

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Then the people of Judah get into the conversation again. It’s about the foreign women again.

People: “Have we not all one Father? Has not one God created us all? Then why do You say we are faithless and profane the covenant of our fathers?

The LORD: “You have been faithless, and abomination has been committed. You have profaned the sanctuary of the LORD, which I love, and have married the daughter of a foreign god.  May any descendant of Jacob who does this be cut off from my people.”

People: “Why don’t you regard our offerings or accept them? Don’t you see our weeping and groaning?

The LORD: “Because I see the wives of your youth, to whom you have been faithless.  Did I not make you ONE, with a portion of the Spirit in your union?  I desired godly offspring.  The man who does not love his wife but divorces her (and marries a pagan woman), covers his garment with violence. GUARD YOURSELVES IN YOUR SPIRIT AND DO NOT BE FAITHLESS.”

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And then it seems God has had enough.

The LORD: “You have wearied the LORD with your words.”

People and priests: “How have we wearied Him?

Answer:  “By saying that, everyone who does evil (inferior offerings, pagan wives), is ‘good’ in the sight of the LORD because He ‘delights’ in them.”

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Malachi 3.

Then, one of the familiar passages in the book, “Behold, I send my messenger, and he will prepare the way before me.  And the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to His temple;  and the messenger of the covenant in whom you delight, Behold, He is coming, says the LORD of Hosts.

He is like a refiner’s FIRE and like fullers’ SOAP. He will refine and purify the sons of Levi as silver and gold, so they will bring offerings in righteousness to the LORD. Then the offering of Judah and Jerusalem will be pleasing to the LORD.”

Notice the TWO MESSENGERS that God promises to send. 

  1. The messenger who will prepare the way…. (John the Baptist).
  2.  The Messenger of the Covenant will suddenly come to his temple. He will refine and purify… (Jesus, in both his first and second comings, refining the remnant).

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Then comes more of their rebellious conversation with God.

The LORD: “I, the LORD, do not change, therefore YOU, O children of Jacob, are not consumed.  As of old, you have not kept my statutes.  RETURN TO ME, AND I WILL RETURN TO YOU.  But you will ask how to return.  Will a man rob God?  YOU are robbing me!

The people:  “How have we robbed you? 

The LORD: “In your tithes and contributions. The whole nation of you are ROBBING ME!

Again, another very familiar passage of God telling them (and us) that we can “test Him” on this. 

The LORD: “Bring the full tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. PUT ME TO THE TEST, if I will not open the windows of heaven for you and pour down for you a blessing until there is no more need.”

(I have done this – I have tested the Lord by giving a regular, full tithe.  And He proved more than faithful and delightful in His blessings to me. You won’t believe how he can stretch the amount that is left from the tithe!  We couldn’t see how it happened, but it did.  God was faithful.  He delighted in proving Himself in this test.  PRAISE HIM!)

Next, the whining people of the God of Israel bring up another point.  They say that “God is not fair. We serve Him by walking in His laws, and we are chastised, whereas evildoers do what they want and prosper.  They defy God and escape. It’s not fair!”

Malachi now mentions the “book of remembrance,” to counter the people’s complaint that the evildoers always prosper.  In that book are all the names of those who fear the LORD and esteem His Name. 

“THEY are mine!” says the LORD. “In the day of judgment, I will spare them. And you will see the distinction between the righteous and the wicked, between one who serves God and one who does NOT serve Him.”

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Malachi 4.

Malachi continues the thought of the differences between the evildoer and the faithful.

  1. “The day of the LORD is coming, burning like an oven, when all the arrogant and all evildoers will be stubble, set ablaze till nothing is left. 
  2. “But for those who fear God’s name, the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its wings.  They will walk all over the wicked for they will be ashes under their feet.

So, God’s final word to the arguing, complaining people of His Name?  “Remember the law of my servant Moses, the statutes and the rules that I commanded him at Horeb for all Israel.”

(Israel was still obligated to keep the Law……. until their Messiah came as the Lamb of God, sacrificed for their sin (fulfilling the Law).   

  • That time was coming! 
  • The saving Messiah was coming. 
  • Watch out for the herald who will announce Him! 
  • Watch and be ready!

 “Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and awesome day of the LORD comes.  And he will turn the hearts of fathers to their children, and the hearts of children to their fathers …………. lest I come and strike the land with a decree of utter destruction.”

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John the Baptist was a “type” of Elijah, “preparing the way” of Jesus, in His first coming.

Elijah and Moses both appeared with Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration.

Maybe it is Elijah and Moses as the two witnesses in the Great Tribulation.

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Okay, now.  It will be 400 years before they again hear the voice of God.  It comes in the form of Gabriel the angel, speaking to the priest Zacharias. 

“Do not be afraid, Zechariah, for your prayer has been heard, and your wife Elizabeth will bear a son, and you shall call his name John.  And you will have joy and gladness, and many will rejoice at his birth, for he will be great before the Lord.  And he will turn many of the children of Israel to the Lord their God, AND GO BEFORE HIM IN THE SPIRIT AND POWER OF ELIJAH … to make ready for the Lord a people prepared.”

WOW.  Tomorrow’s study will be 400 years later than todays!

 

 

 

 

 

 

2024GOAL – Reading Through The Bible Chronologically, days 273 & Bonus Day

Sep30

    Days 273 & a bonus day—We are in the NINTH month of Bible reading, finishing the Old Testament with the prophecy of MALACHI,

NOTE: Sunday and Monday studies are posted on Monday.

    Day 273 – Malachi 1 – 4 (Jews become complacent and hard-hearted while Nehemiah is back in Persia; Malachi addresses their polluting sacrifices, marrying foreign wives, withholding tithes, and committing social injustice. When God often accuses them of sin, they respond arrogantly, HOW have we sinned?)

Malachi 1.  God tells the backsliding Jews, “I have loved you.”  They say, “HOW have you loved us?” And God reminds them of His choosing of the younger twin, Jacob (their ancestor) over Esau, and how He has cared for them as a father for a son.”

God then confronts the priests, “Where is my fear, O priests, who despise my name.”  And they answer belligerently, “How have we despised your name?”    “By offering polluted food upon my altar,” God says.  “How have we polluted you?“ they wonder.  When you offer blind animals in sacrifice, is that not evil?  I have no pleasure in you, and I will not accept an offering from your hand.”   “Cursed be the cheat who has a male in his flock and vows it…..and yet sacrifices to the Lord what is blemished!”

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Malachi 2. God continues through Malachi. “And now, O priests, if you will not listen, if you will not take to heart to give honor to my name, then I will send the curse upon you, and I will curse your blessings.  Indeed, I already have cursed them.”  God had made a covenant with the tribe of Levi for life, to set it apart for Himself. These priests deceived themselves by claiming the covenant’s privileges while neglecting its conditions as if God was obligated to bless them.

“A second thing you do,” says the LORD. “You cover my altar with tears,  weeping, and groaning because I no longer regard the offering or accept it with favor from your hand.”   The people respond with, “Why do you not?”  And the LORD tells them why.  “Because I am a witness between you and the wife of your youth, to whom you have been faithless, though she is your wife by covenant.  What was I seeking? I was seeking godly offspring.  The man who does not love his wife but divorces her…covers his garment with violence.  SO, GUARD YOURSELVES in your spirit, and do not be faithless.”  (NOTE: They were divorcing their Jewish wives to marry pagan wives.)

‘You have wearied the LORD with your words.  But you say, “How have we wearied him?”    By saying, “Everyone who does evil is good in the sight of the Lord, and He delights in them.”  OR by asking, “Where is the God of justice?”

(What cantankerous, hard-hearted, arrogant people?  (Oh, LORD, am I like that sometimes?)

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Malachi 3. The king is coming and sending his Messenger before him to prepare for and announce Him.  This is the voice of “one calling in the wilderness” (Isaiah 40:3) and the Elijah of Malachi 4:5 who initially comes before the Lord.  (The New Testament says he is John the Baptist. (Matthew 3:3, 11:10, 17:12+, Mark 1:2, Luke 1:17, 7:26-27, John 1:23)). The prophecy extends to the second coming of the Lord too, when judgment will come on all who have broken all God’s laws.

God calls to the ‘children of Jacob,’ “Return to me, and I will return to you.”  But they say, “How shall we return?  God accused them, “Will a man rob God?  You are robbing me.”  They say, “How have we robbed you?  

God answers them with a challenge.  “In your tithes and offerings, for you are robbing me, the whole nation of you!”  

THE CHALLENGE:  “BRING THE FULL TITHE INTO THE STOREHOUSE, THAT THERE MAY BE FOOD IN MY HOUSE. AND THEREBY PUT ME TO THE TEST, SAYS THE lord OF HOSTS, IF I WILL NOT OPEN THE WINDOWS OF HEAVEN FOR YOU AND POUR DOWN FOR YOU A BLESSING UNTIL THERE IS NO MORE NEED. I WILL REBUKE THE DEVOURER FOR YOU SO IT WILL NOT DESTROY THE FRUITS OF YOUR SOIL OR VINE.  AND ALL THE NATIONS WILL CALL YOU BLESSED, FOR YOU WILL BE A LAND OF DELIGHT….. says the LORD of hosts.”

Some feared the Lord, and He heard them. “They shall be mine in the day when I make up my treasured possession, and I will spare them as a man spares his son who serves him.”

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Malachi 4. This last chapter features prophecies about the great and terrible DAY OF THE LORD when He will come in judgment to “set ablaze all the arrogant and evildoers.”  There are links to Isaiah, Joel, Zephaniah, and Revelation.  All who refuse to repent will be cast into the fire of hell.

And the “the Sun of righteousness shall rise with healing in its wings.”

Malachi closes with a promise of fulfillment. They can prepare by remembering the law of Moses, the statutes, and the rules.

“Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and awesome day of the LORD comes. And he will turn the hearts of the fathers to their children and the hearts of the children to their fathers….” (opposite of what happens in Christ’s first coming)  (Matthew 10:34-36)

NOTE: John the Baptist is a type of Elijah at Christ’s first appearance. Moses (the law) and Elijah (the prophets) appear with Jesus at the transfiguration, and they may also be the actual two witnesses in the great tribulation (Revelation 11:1-3)

THE END OF OLD TESTAMENT

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    Bonus Day – A Free Day for Leap Year.

Spend this day thumbing through the Old Testament, remembering all you have read, reviewing the passages and verses that touched your heart (or conscience), and preparing your heart and mind for the New Testament and the story of Jesus Christ and His followers.