What's Wrong with Ewe: Malachi and Us

I’ve been greatly helped in my study of Malachi by Mark Dever’s book The Message of The Old Testament and The Malachi Commentary in the New American Commentary series, the author of this particular book is E. Ray Clendenen; I was, however, most helped by reading Malachi over and over and over and over.

Malachi is a different book, it is categorized as a minor prophet but it is truly unlike any of the other’s in its category. Malachi is written almost like a dialogue: God asks questions and then the response of Israel is given; God says more stuff then Israel, etcetera. And Malachi is not full of kinda understandable words much like the other minor prophets, but it is clear—with the understanding of the historical context of what’s going on at the time—and it has some historical writing in it as well as prophesy. But let’s first look at the background.

Hundreds of year prior to the proclamation of Malachi the God of the Bible chose Abram out of all the people of the world and blessed him and his offspring, God stating that He would love Abram and his descendant’s. The LORD God did this because He wanted to. The Almighty brought Abram’s descendants out of slavery by astonishing and shocking—sometimes horrifying—acts which could be explained only by God’s intervention: God killed masses at times, brought plagues, changed the very reasoning of some, healed, changed the natural order of how the world goes mostly; why did God do these things? He loved Israel (Abram’s offspring). For very short and infrequent periods of time Israel was thankful and grateful for God’s love…but it was often and blatant that the people of Israel rejected God’s love.

God is no sovereign softie however, He warned Israel and when they continued in their mockery of Him God disciplined Him, the biggest way being that foreign nations literally enslaved and took Israel—and Judah, which for our sake here can be lumped into Israel—out of their native land (Canaan we’ll call it) and into the captors land to live. (God not only warned that the captivity would happen but also, in a comforting way, told them that there would be a certain number of years that they would be enslaved in the foreign land then God would return Israel to Canaan).

So Israel was enslaved for years until, by some cool happenings, some were allowed to go back to Canaan and rebuild Israel’s city walls as well as the Temple God had instructed them to build, which is where all those sacrifices of animals were made to God.

This is the background to Malachi, God, more times than is countable, forgave and loved Israel despite Israel’s rebellion and overall hatred and mockery of God. For literally hundreds of years this has been going on but God was faithful to do what He said He would.

So then, the city of Israel is being rebuilt, the Temple is, for all practical purposes, completed, everything in Israel seems to be going well! More people are returning from exile, the once eerily emptied streets are being filled with children running around, women carrying products to market, men talking of their days’ venture.
But then Malachi comes onto the scene, a no name guy—he actually is never before or after mentioned again. And he starts saying that Israel is, though looking good outwardly, filled with big problems. So lets see what is being addressed.



The beginning of Malachi is laid out with a comparison: Israel vs. Edom, Edom being Esau’s—brother of Jacob, kids of Isaac--descendant. Israel is complaining that Edom’s land and people are being blessed more than they are. If you can get a 3-year-old with a wrinkled, wet face in your mind, use that picture for Israel at this moment. Israel is sincerely saying, ‘God does not love us, if He did we would be like Edom.’ So obviously, in the first couple of lines, we see that this rebellious and not-understanding-God attitude has prevailed through the exile. God, in response to this particular complaint says if Israel would but entrust themselves to God He would bless Israel’s land--because according to chapter 3 verse 11 there was a ‘devourer’ in the land of Israel, which probably was some kind of creature like a locust eating all the food Israel was trying to grow, God said He would stop it though! The Creator not only is willing to bless Israel’s land now but reminds Israel of His might—He can easily make Edom an inhabitable and deplorable place (found in verse 4)—but of His purpose—displaying His glory and goodness beyond the borders of Israel (found in verse 5); the latter God did because I, the writer of this here post, am not a Jew though I do follow God; I am not from the land of Israel near the Mediterranean but am half the world away geographically.

The next issue God takes up is the way Israel’s sacrificial system is going down: the people of Israel were offering blemished or lame lambs for their sacrifice AND the priests were accepting them as good sacrifices. This may seem odd and maybe trivial to us but to God it said a lot. As is outlined in the Old Testament books of Deuteronomy and Leviticus there was a certain type of lamb that was to be offered in worship to God: the first born without blemish. You have to understand that sometimes this was hard to give up! It could be the prime and best of a herd AND it was never known how many other lambs would be born to the herd. However this is what God asked of the people to sacrifice. But, and this was a clear caveat, if the first born had blemishes of any kind, being blind, or lame or not good in anyway that person was to take the second-born, or the next that had no blemish.

Who is responsible for this particular offense of unacceptable sacrifices being accepted? Both the people of Israel and the priests. The people are responsible because they are the ones saying they will obey, ‘Sure I’ll give the first-born unblemished sacrifice,’ but come sacrifice time they bring in a lousy creature to be offered to God (verse 14). So the people were deceiving one another and God. God calls out their foolishness by saying if they tried to offer such a creature to one of their governor’s the political or geographical leader would not even accept such a pathetic gift, why would the God of the universe (verse 8)?

But a greater responsibility and rebuke was laid on the priests, the leaders of the whole nation. They were the ones who were supposed to be teaching Israel what was good and acceptable but instead they were guiding the people into sin and not correcting Israel but were blessing their sin and saying it was good (chapter 2.9). God lamented in chapter 1 that there was not even ONE priest who cared for God’s honor enough to close the Temple doors so that the very alter of God, where God’s presence was, would remain unpolluted (verse 10). The very ones given the responsibility to teach the nation what was good and who God was were doing the very opposite.

Maybe the intent of Israel was not bad though, you know, you can be sincere in intent but it just is done in a poor way. In our culture today this is huge, ‘Oh but he meant well; God does not care how He is worshipped as long as it is from the heart.’ I can see where we get this, David himself in a Psalm says that God was not concerned with the sacrifices David made, no matter how many they were, God cared for the heart only. But here in Malachi God cared greatly that Israel and the priests sacrificed the way God had clearly instructed. Obviously you can be sincere but wrong about something. Mark Dever says, ‘Sincerity is necessary, but it is not sufficient.’ That is because there is more to the sacrifices. The sacrifices, as we know from the New Testament book of Hebrews, were in no way able to save Israel from their sins--it is an animal for goodness sake!—but it was to point directly to Jesus, the Messiah, the Christ who was to come who was going to be PERFECT and WITHOUT BLEMISH AND DEFECT. If the Christ was imperfect as a sacrifice His atonement, His blood WOULD, indeed, be worthless to all humanity, unable to save anyone from their plight. So you can see why this was a big deal, the unblemished first-born, it was to remind Israel of the coming Messiah and to the nations of the world looking in that God is who He said He was. God says that Israel, in offering lame animals, has despised Him. Those are some strong words. ‘Okay God, aren’t you being a little too picky here? I mean, it is hard sometimes and it is not like Israel was offering nothing.’ These words are the sentiment of chapter 1 verse 13. But God seemed to care a lot about this issue and the consequences were great too: cursed land, the priests lineage would, metaphorically, have poop smudged on their faces (chapter 2 verse 3)—huge insult at the time by the way, especially whenever you speak of future generations.

The next big theme is in chapter 2: infidelity. Verse 14 tells why another reason God seems not to care for the sacrifices of Israel, against what He asked of them Israel is marrying foreign women and divorcing their wives. God says that Israel’s infidelity is an affront to God Himself and it is destructive for the culture and society of Israel. This is interesting since we usually see divorce or unfaithfulness as something between 2 or 3 people, not something having to deal with God and an entire culture of people. Also, there is disdain here IN the divorce; the Israelites were divorcing because they hated the wife of their youth—their Israel woman they married first (16). It is not necessarily the divorce itself—God had some guidelines about when it was acceptable to divorce—but the motive for divorce: someone else was more appealing and ‘the old’ was boring and became someone who was disdained.

Also, Israel was being unfaithful to God. This seems to be all-encompassing because there are so many ways Israel is following other god’s other than YHWH, who is the God of the Bible. But the link with the previous subject is that the way Israel acted socially manifested their worship of God, which, at this time, was poor: divorce was a God issue not just something of preference, at least that is how God sees it here.

The final major concern that is pointed out is that Israel sees injustice going on in the world and concludes that God, unlike what He said, is not just and cares not for executing and bringing about justice (2.17). Beginning in chapter 3 an interesting thing is done, God helps Israel see that many times the justice that will be brought about is the ULTIMATE or ETERNAL justice. We too can look at the world around us today and see clearly that there are acts of injustice going on everyday in every area of life in every country in the whole world. But in verse 4 and 5 God points out that for those who have followed and entrusted themselves to His love in the Final Judgment of all the inhabitants that have ever been found on the face of the Earth, God’s followers will be refined and made pure but those who have not will be destroyed finally and eternally. God’s justice is ultimate and will not ultimately suffer injustice. This means that one who lives a life doing injustice may die and the world living during that individual’s lifetime will never see justice happen to that person. But there will be a time in the future when that person will be given life for a short time only to recount what he did in life and then rightly sentenced to eternal justice; so justice, when all is said and done, will be rightly served to all. This is not only astounding but astonishing and is meant to help Israel see that God IS in control and that He IS a God of justice, Israel—and we—at times, might have to wait a while to see it.

THIS IS EXACTLY WHY GOD KEEPS CRYING OUT TO ISRAEL, God speaks to Israel because they do not know they are rebelling; He lets them see their rebellion but says, I know your sin but turn to me and I will bless you (3.7). This should shock us! For hundreds of years Israel has in compliance or ignorance turned its back on God YET HE CONTINUES TO LOVE THEM AND PROSPER THEM. The Apostle Paul in the New Testament says that love is patient and has forbearance, well do we see God displaying and being love in that exact way here.

In chapter 3 verse 16 we see a few in Israel who respond to God and God takes note. Chapter 4 goes on to speak of future things which, thankfully, we can see fulfilled directly in the New Testament Gospels, though some of which we will not see until that Final Judgment.

Israel, like me, in retaliation to God’s love, whined and sinned instead of loving God. But God’s relentless love will win, it has in me and can in you too.

To close, Malachi is not about following a bunch of rules to the ‘T,’ but it is about true worship of God. The worship of God is not about what goes on inside the church building walls but everything it is, as Dever points out was true in John the Baptist and others, ‘living as if we believe [God], by running with joyous abandon toward him, and by trusting that he will love us as his own through Christ Jesus.’


Please note that this is in no way exhaustive. I’ve purposely left out some big stuff but, in ignorance, left out more stuff. I hope you will, if anything else, be intrigued enough to read Malachi on your own. If you have questions, concerns, qualms or caveats please let me know, I’d enjoy a dialogue.

[02-07-2011]

The way I reckon it:
grab you a plan
then run somewhere in the land.

What the Bible Says About Women Fighting on the Military Front Lines

The roaring initial question the title of this post provokes should be ‘why does it matter at all?’ A Christian is one who desires to honor God in all aspects of life, a Christian wants to be able to say, ‘I do this or that because I see that God, through the Bible, instructs us to do it that way.’ A Christian cannot limit Christianity to only certain parts or aspects of life because all of life is spiritual and a sort of litmus of who that person follows or gives credence to. The Apostle Paul states that a Christian can honor God even in the way a Christian eats and drinks—these are the most mundane day-to-day activities yet we can do them in a way that worships the God who created all things!

It is also a good habit to see what the culture says in light of what the Bible says. The question of whether women should be fighting militarily on the front lines, purposely placing themselves—and being ordered to be placed there--is a question that should not be influenced by culture, rights, or ability. A Christian cannot be coaxed by the prevalent or dominating thought or philosophy of the day if that movement is contrary to what the God of the universe deems right. The all-inclusive approved-thought culture we live in errs greatly in the assumption that each thought is of equal value and authority. That being said, trying to understand where the ideas culture presents and are conceived is helpful for sure but not the topic of this post.

But what DOES the Bible say about this issue? There are some examples of women on the battlefield:
In Judges a woman named Deborah, who was a prophetess, led a group of men into battle and won. Looking at the whole story, however, reveals that there was supposed to be a man leading the charge, Barak, but he lacked courage and wanted Deborah, almost like a good luck charm, to go with him. So she did and he was not given the honor of victory in the battle. So the most glaring instance of a woman on the front-line battlefield is nullified because the prophesy was for Barak, the man, to lead but he failed to do so.

In this same chapter of Judges we see a woman fighting. Jael was a woman who received the King, Sisera, into her home; Sisera was fleeing a battle and he came to Jael in hopes of hiding from his pursuers. She, seemingly at his service, brought him something to drink, at his request, and hid him in a carpet; when he fell asleep rolled up in the carpet she hammered in a tent peg into his skull. (What a woman!) In this instance I think we can conclude that Jael was not intentionally on the front lines but the front lines came to her. This is unavoidable at times and also proves one of my points that yes, woman are very capable—some more than most men—of performing well on the battlefield. The ability can be there but what of God’s DESIGN.

I like intelligence, so what about a spying, being an agent in enemy territory. Someone said as long as there has been war there has been spies. Rehab, a prostitute in the genealogy of Jesus, was herself a spy. Many women during America’s civil war were very good spies. Spy work can often be done and needed because of the absence of men who are off on the front lines.

God knows all this, for He created both man and woman. This issue is not about, not a matter of the song ‘anything you can do I can do better.’ There is something more than that. God created the male to lead, to protect and provide. King David had a famous group of people around him who were the Navy SEALs of the day, they were all men. When Abraham’s relative, Lot, was captured, he and some of his male servants went out to battle the enemy and free Lot. Moses was the one who fought off the men at the well who were pestering the women who were trying to water their livestock. All of the other battles in the Old Testament were fought with the men doing their duty as protectors of their family and land.

You may say, ‘but this was just because of the cultural norms of the day.’ This is a great question and is the reason for my opening statements. The Bible presents a framework for genders and their general roles in society and for our present culture they seem vile and unsavory: ‘wives, submit to your husbands.’ Does this mean women are for mommying and cooking, varying only when the authoritarian husband demands her to do another task at his whim? Absolutely not. It does mean that the man will—presently does—bear the brunt of responsibility before God and society for himself and his family. When speaking of qualifications for the leadership of elder in the church Paul cites that an elder’s children must be obedient and his wife a respected individual: if the man’s home is in shambles how can he be trusted to lead others? Also, there is a woman painted in the book of Proverbs; this woman is strong, she does not get swindled when buying property, she feeds her children and she, in a very real way, makes her husband look good as he trusts her with much. The bible prizes woman: in Ephesians a man is to love his wife as Christ loves His church, laying his very life down for her. Let me say that again, the husband is to give up himself, his very life, FOR HIS WIFE!! The Bible says the man should adorn his wife with his affection and life-vigor because she is worthy of it. He goes on the front line out of love.

A friend was shocked when I said women should not be on the frontlines of battle. ‘They can fight too,’ was the reply. I said, ‘They should not have to.’ In our American humanistic culture we devalue and diminish and curtail the beauty in the gender specific distinctions and qualities. Women are not too fragile or incompetent or too weak to be on the front lines. And a woman should not somehow feel cheated because the right is not hers.

As far as cultural thought goes, sometimes we see no immediate problems when we do something contrary to what God places forward for us to do; sometimes we NEVER see any negative result, but the absence of fireballs from the sky or immediate death by a transgressor does not notarize ones actions to be okay and good. Often the Christian is called to do things that are different than the rest of society, but obedience to God is their main goal—as God has clearly demonstrated by His words in the Bible—not necessarily what makes the most sense at the present time.

This post by no means comprehensive nor exhaustive so I welcome all disputation and comments as always, so long as they are logical and have some kind of point.



******The newest installment of How to Study the Old Testament is upcoming, we will be looking at the minor prophet Malachi; is sincerity in worship all that God wants? How responsible are leaders for a nations spiritual health? And God, once more, has astounding forbearance towards those whom he greatly loves.*****

An Article on Bookstores Worth Musing Over

What do bookstores have to do with culture? Ah, this is why we think and not react only:


Here's the article

the trepidation of the trite

I’m presently enjoying a book about CIA operatives performing their duty on a factual mission in Afghanistan, at the time they were the only Americans on that country’s soul. It is exciting to read in detail the events and thoughts which transpired.

Do you fear walking through the threshold of death, looking back, and having no monumental events or occasions pepper your life? What is it to live an extraordinary life?

I see many souls scurrying about thinking that they must accomplish great things lest their life be lived for naught. Who determines greatness? Better still, who is it that judges a life’s worth while it was activated on earth? The Christian sees that the answer to both is God, the Creator, the Almighty, the God of the Bible, YHWH.

Certainly then, understanding who it is that deems a life well spent we should look to his followers. We see missionaries, ministers who sacrificed their very blood for others in lands not their own among a people often loathed by their own. These men and women are fire works on the sky of humanity; people who did more for salvation and social justice or legality and nation building than a thousand others combined. But is this what the God of the Bible endows as a worthy life? Perhaps our conclusion of a life lived well is incorrect, informed by unmerited malcontents.

God does not ask that we turn the world upside down. God does not ask that we be movers and shakers in our society. God does not ask that we be neat. God demands that we exhaust our abilities in displaying the genuine affection we have to Him who gave us all we have and to treat our fellowman in that light. The soul who does this will happily lie down in his grave even if he accomplished nothing in the eyes of the world around him. And happy will be his God to receive him in His presence. In the eyes of this God the way we do and the obedience we have always trumps visible or numerical results. Which do you live by?

Copper Mountain

1.1.11

Foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless
nipping at God with a faith that’s toothless.
Seeing Him with eyes gone black;
with a mind gone slack;
trading the bang for the God of the track.