The Study of Malachi | Lesson 4

I want us to remember what we have learned so far. Remember that god's word to the people of Israel through Malachi was his last word for four hundred years. Think about that. From Malachi to right over here in the gospels is four hundred years of silence. He said nothing more to them.

You know, I guess sometimes if you say it and you say it and you say it to your kid or whatever, and and they're not listening and they're not receiving, you just say, okay. I'm done. So for four hundred years, he wasn't speaking, but he was not still. He was not sobbed. He was not quite he was still mining everything up for the birth of our sake, everything up for the completion of the Old Testament and the New Testament.

The Jews of Malachi's day had forgotten their first love. As women of faith, you ever saw men think about a time in your life where you felt like you're more on fire for god or that he was speeding you more every day? The Jews of Malachi's day have forgotten their first love. That's one thing that we should pray, Lord, don't let us ever forget. Let us ever forget that love.

He addresses that remnant who returned from Babylon after seventy years of captivity. They had been back in the land for over one hundred years that they had not turned back to God. So they were there, and they were going through those motions over and over and over again. The motions of being a child of god and yet, everything was kind of coming between David and god. There were so many distractions.

There were so many other things, so many other thoughts that had proven in their brain to be reality when really it wasn't. So for over a hundred years, even though God had brought them back, they had not turned back to him. On the surface, things looked good. The remnant built Jerusalem and the temple. They came back and they and the Nehemiahs and the Ephraims and they brought them all together and they built it.

They found it. They found the word. But their hearts were both broken and repulsive to God. And he was looking at this nation as his children. These are my people.

We've talked about that in song group. The ones chosen. The ones he picked out to be his. So, I wonder sometime that god might see a little bit of Israel in the days of Malachi in our own America. You think about how far we'd stray as a nation.

And maybe, maybe that is one thing that makes women of faith hold on to this. We we gotta hold on to it because without it, we're gonna look like the pagan nations. Right? We're gonna look like Israel who just drifted away from god almighty. We can't have the drifting away, hot friends.

Hot to look. Well, things look pretty good for most Americans. We have food, water, homes, and freedom. So this morning, I want you to think, what does he see when he looks into your heart? What does he see with all of our sounds like, what does he see?

What do you see in the mirror when all your makeups? Thought that's not very pretty, Right? So when he when there's nothing except us and him, who does he sleep? What woman does he sleep? I don't want us to be weak, weak, wimpy women.

I want us to be strong women. Women who fear God and love God, and also we're challenged by this word and we study it. That mean we're going to understand here. It does not mean we're going to understand everything. If anybody in this room understands everything, y'all need to come up here while you sit down.

We're done because we're not going to But this word of God makes us women of faith. Without the word of God, we we are just like those Israelites that were trying to do what they could from memory make. I don't know whether they couldn't remember or whether they just had to stay for what God had told them. So think about that when you go home. There's the one there you can write on if you want to.

What does he see in your heart? So that's just something for you to look at and think about. So, The Lord had a great love for His chosen people, Israel. Malachi says in the very first chapter, I have loved you, says the Lord, but you say, how have you loved us?' Remember we talked about this. Even though they continually complain and grumble to God, He still loved them and they still grumbled.

Yeah, I ought wise to be grumblers. I mean, you ever have people in your life that seem to grumble a bunch? I mean, we don't want that. We want God to look on here on this women's ministry Bible study and see women that are joyful in the word. Not because we understand everything and not because we have all the answers, but we know where to get them.

And we know who to go to when we need them. And we need to know who to go to when we need to pray for a sick friend or when we we're struggling to some that in our own lives. That's what we praise god for. As Israel says, how had you loved us? So they grumble.

They chose to groan. God chose to love them. Number two, the priest offered God defective, polluted sacrifices. God said, oh priest, you despise my name. And the priest asked, how have ye despised your name?

And then he tells them very simply how. PSG says, by offering polluted food upon my altar, NLT says, you have shown contempt by offering defile sacrifice and on my altar. So, they bring it the broken animals, the the less than perfect animals. And all these sacrifice, think about that we we've learned this thing about this. All these sacrifices that they were bringing was what?

A foreshadow of who? Jesus. Of Jesus. The perfect sacrifice. The lamb of God, the perfect lamb of God.

And Malachi writes, When you offer blind animals in sacrifice, is that not evil? And when you offer those that are lame or sick, is that not evil? So when we come to worship or when we have our own worship time at home, if we come not ready, should we even be there? We we wanna bring to God that the very best we've got. What the Holy Spirit has shown us, what the Holy Spirit has taught us.

Anything other than that, we don't need it. So we look at this and he's speaking to the leaders of that of those people, the religious leaders, the priests. Israel leaders were the ones who were cheating god. And this is the truth. God takes a light in pure offerings then and now.

Whatever we bring to him needs to be from here. It needs to be thought through. It needs to be prayed over. It needs to be given to the most holy God in the most submissive manner. The priest can't lead the people to honor God because they are the ones who dishonor him first.

That is a scary thing, which is another reason we can praise God for the leaders we have in our church. The leaders, the ones who stand before us. We can trust that to pray for them. We ask God to bind away anything that distracts them. For Sunday school teacher, Joshua, inquire.

Every place there's somebody standing in front of you that's teaching, we need to pray, say, and away from them. And then God says, I'm talking about the priests, the teachers. Oh, that there were one among you who would shut the door, that you might not kindle the fire on my altar in vain. Is there not one priest out there that says, Don't bring that blemished offering. Don't bring that blemished sacrifice.

Is there one among you that would shut the door? That you might not kindle the fire of my altar and vain. So what is that saying? It's saying if we don't bring him the best we have, if we don't give him the utmost that we have to give, we'll do it his dislike we're skinning our wheels in the sand. I'm not pleased with you, says the Lord of heaven's armies, and I'll mobotic center.

Offerings. Oh my goodness, y'all. And he was looking for just one priest, just one leader who would love him well, just one that he could trust. Goes on. Hers would be the cheek who had the mail in his flock and vows it and yet sacrifices to the lord what is blemished.

The saying, don't bring me that broken, sorry, sheep, lamb. Don't bring me that one. Bring me the very best of what you've got. Bring me the very best of what you got and then you're going to see what I'm going to do with it. If we give to god the best we got, he's gonna make it for his glory, for his honor.

And and the priest, the ones that were chosen to be his religious authority were cheating him. The priest was cheating him. Cursed be the cheek who hemmed pad as a male in his glove and vows it and yet sacrifices to the lord what is blemish. For I'm a great king, says the lord oppose, and my name will be fear among the nations. What are you doing bringing that to me?

And this he this was the dew of Israel. This This was the four hundred the reason that the four hundred years of silence because they just kept turning away from him. So the priest had failed the lord, the holy righteous god of Israel rebukes the priest. For the lips of a priest should guard knowledge and people should seek instruction from his mouth for he is the messenger of the Lord of hosts. Woah, Skippy.

The messenger of the lord of hosts. Hey, no, it takes up. Everybody in this room is a messenger of the lord host. That's right. You are his person to speak at your dinner table or at your bunco group or wherever you are and the grocery store when the people around you are just acting tatty.

Like sometimes I think people go into a program and take a pill before they get in there. Well, I mean, two of us, okay, everybody's gotta get to the line. So, just take a pill, sit back. The lips of a crease should guard knowledge and people should seek instruction from his mouth for he is the messenger of the lord of hosts. But you turned aside from the way.

You have caused many to stumble by your instruction. You have corrupted the covenant of Levi, says the lord of hosts and so I make you despise and a face which means humiliated before all the people in this much as you do not keep my weight but show partiality in your instruction, they show a part they don't treat everybody's sin. And they bring these sticky little sacrifices who are which are unworthy to be even sacrificed to a holy god. God, we can't do that. We have to give him the very best of what we've got.

The priests were the messengers of god in Israel. They were to represent god to the people and represent the people to God. Oh my goodness. As women of faith as women of faith, we are for rep to represent God to the people at our dinner table, to the peach people at our kitchen table, to the people that we are with. We are to represent God to them and then represent the people to God.

That's through prayer. That's through teaching. That's through uplifting. That's through loving on women. If you have to love them and love them and love them to get them to Jesus, that's what we gotta do.

But the priests and leaders failed to teach God's children. All walk groups and scurry. And then, Jose, this might be one of the most sobering verses in the whole Bible, I think. My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge. Because you have rejected knowledge, I reject you for being a priest to me.

And since you have forgotten the law of your god, I also hope you get your joy. How we destroy? What destroys us? Not I mean, our faith, we can't our faith cannot be destroyed if we hang on kind enough, if we keep in this book. Our faith is dependent upon it our faith is dependent upon our love for this, our our love for this book and upon the Holy Spirit to be the teacher so that we'll keep the love just right.

We cannot forget the law of God. That's what we knew about setting. But I had told the children of Israel over and over again, my people would be destroyed because they have no knowledge. Have you ever been around somebody who somebody who says that they are a Christian who professes to be a Christian, but you don't see a lot of fruit in that person? And you also don't see a Bible with her ever or a Bible in her home or We can't do this without the knowledge of God.

We can't do this without Bible say. We can't do this without Malachi, without Hosea, without Jeremiah, without those guys. We cannot without him, without him. He wanted to establish the marriage covenant to secure bodily offspring. That's why he wanted the marriages to say, No, don't bring a foreigner hens.

Don't don't do that. A barner would be a person who didn't love God. To break that person into your union. He wanted to establish the marriage covenant to secure Godly all offspring. God prohibited the marriage of an unbeliever and one of his children because they were his godly offspring.

Don't mix them up. God did not want an unbeliever to lead even one of his children into idolatry. Idolatry. Was a situation that was addressed at other times. Think about the doors King Solomon opened and the havoc that followed with all his wives.

Think about Solomon. He started out good, remember? He started out good the the song of Solomon, the Proverbs. He was on the right page, y'all. But what happened to him?

He got distracted. Now King Solomon loved many foreign women. Solomon clung to those in love. He had 700 wives who were prixises and 300 concubines. That's a busy dude.

And his wives turned away his heart. His wives turned away his heart. For when Solomon was old and his wife turned away his heart after other gods and his heart was not holy true to the lord your god as was the heart of his father day His and we know and that that's not saying you're gonna be sinless because we know David was not sinner. Right? But his heart was forgiven.

His heart was purified after forgiveness of god. But sin but Sona never could get back this. You never could get back in it. Nehemiah also left a very strong message about Israelites marrying the pagans of the lands around them. He wrote this, In those days I saw the Jews who had married women of Ashdod, Ammon, and Moab.

And half of their children spoke the language of Ashdod, and they could not speak the language of Judah, but only the language of each people. Nehemiah, he gets kind of, he gets down right here. And I confronted them and cursed them and beat some of them and pulled out their hair. Now, I didn't count that way before. Have you not?

You got that one sitting at the table and he will not listen. And you wanna pull out a tear? For her, had trouble as. I already put this over my. It's a little teary in my.

That's what she just said. Hello. Pull out their hair. Woah, Skippy. And I rate them taking off oath in the name of God saying, you shall not give your daughters to their sons or take their daughters for your sons or for yourselves.

And not Solomon, king of Israel, sin on account of such women. How did sin get in Solomon's life? Not only did Solomon know it, but who does Nehemiah knows? How did he get there? What food issues?

We've got immoral women. Foreign women make even him to sin. Shall we then listen to you and do all this great evil and act graciously against our God by marrying foreign women? Would you wanna do that? I think it was safe to say that he was pretty serious about obedience in the law.

You go cloud. They're hanging, y'all. So we see that Malachi was not the first to address the fall in love, The Americas, just like there was an ongoing lesson to learn. Each generation, each to places in which said again this morning, say, how long does it take you to fall away from God's oy eek one generation? Four, Judah and her priests were faithless.

We heard that word a lot. If we read it, study. Faithless. Judah, the children of the Southern kingdom violated the marriage vows given to them by god. They profaned God's covenant by showing contempt for God and all that he called holy.

Well, I don't know. You ever seen anybody show contempt for God? I think I run the other way. But that's what the priest did. That's what they did.

They showed contempt for the holy God. Now, some more. Have we not all one father? Has not one God created us? Why then are we faithless to one another, profaning the covenant of our father?

Are we faithless? Judah has been faith less, and abomination has been committed in Israel and in Jerusalem. Oh, abomination sound even worse that faith was done. For Judah has profaned the sanctuary of the Lord which the lord loves, which he loves and has married the daughter of a foreign god. May the lord cut off from the tent of Jacob any descendant of the man who does this, then brings an offering to the lord god.

Oh, don't even bring it to you. Don't bring me your debtor less than for off. Marriages with those from pagan nations were against the law of Moses. Why? Because God was serious.

God is serious about his relationship with each of us too. He is serious about want to get right exact dad in the middle of your business. He is serious about he's the one that we need to talk to first. Don't pick up that phone. Don't put, don't hit that fast dial to somebody.

No, we gotta be still and sit with God before we do that. He was serious about Israel's covenant relationship with He. And he was more than serious about what is his own marrying an unbeliever. That covenant went both ways. Judah, just like Israel, had been unfaithful to God and profaned the covenant that protected them from people.

See, God gave us protection. He's told He showed us how to protect ourselves. He showed us how to protect ourselves. He showed us how to protect our family. What we have to be?

Obedient. Submit it. Submit it to this book. To to love it and learn it and and just long for it. Think about the heartbreak of god Because why?

What he calls him? Where'd he go? His treasure possession? I would think that many of us is if many of oh, wait. Right.

Many of our treasured possessions have breathed our hearts. You get a snitch in the neck and that that child, that beloved one can breath your heart. Can you even imagine what Israel is doing to the heart of God? His chosen people. What what what they're doing to this heart?

You ever think about God heartbreaking? In Deuteronomy, we read this, for you are a people holy to the lord your god. The lord your god has chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession. Out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth. It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the lord set his love on you and shows you.

For you were the fewest of all hills but it is because the lord but you and is keep it the oath that he's for to your fighters. That the Lord has brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery from the hand of Pharaoh, king of Egypt. He did it. He was the one who did God brought him out. God set him straight.

God put him on a path. God made a way through the waters. God did it to take him out of the hand of the Pharaoh, king of Egypt. Long before the prophets, Hosea, Jeremiah, Isaiah, Joel, Amos, all of them, Moses was reminding God's people that he had swore to their fathers that they were the apple of God's eyes. Know for certain that God never took his eyes off those trusted people.

How unsody. Oh, I I I truly believe he never paid me a house off, he he. You've confessed your seal before him. You've committed your life to him. You are also the apple on his eye.

That's right. And he's not gonna turn away. He has chosen you. And Malachi was trying to get their attention. He's like the Holy Spirit bites hunted to get trying to get our attention.

When you get into one of these studies and you really take your time, really on a day that you just can't answer the questions, know, these are too hard. I can't find them. But you just sit there, and you just keep on, and you keep on, and you keep on. He's trying to get our attention. Malachi was worried about the faithlessness of his people, and he break that up to them.

Listen, Judah had been faithless. God's people had not separated themselves from all the tikas of the lamb who did not know or fear their Jehovah God in Israel. They had not separated himself from them. So all the the the muck and whatever, all them would get on the bill. He addressed that specific time of separation from idol worshippers.

He didn't want them he didn't want them to gather together. Don't go out there with that idol worshiper. Don't do it. Don't sacrifice to those idols. Don't do it.

And we know that he wasn't finished. The second thing you hit, you cover the Lord's altars with tears, with weeping and groaning because he no longer regard the awesome or eczeczy, safer for your hash. But you say, why does he not? Because the Lord was witness between you and the Laika for youth, to whom you have been faceless, though she is your companion and your life like covenant. He said, that's not the plan I had for you.

That wife of your youth was to say you're the wife of your youth because that is part of the covenant, the promise. And so their offerings that are coming to him are not acceptable because they're living and sin. Right? God the father cannot and will not accept Judah's offering because he knows that they're sinful. We gotta confess up though.

We gotta fess up so we could meet her. He sees Judah's faithlessness to the wife of Judah's youth where they should have been a permanent bond, where there should have been a permanent bond. The priest and the men cover God's altar with fake tears. They're up there crying and carrying awe and living white smack dabbing in the middle of sin. I mean, it's kind of like when a little person had the tzu on her pant and she was crying because he got her a cookie jar, right?

I didn't get that cookie. It just joked out of that jar into mine. So the priest and the men covered God's altar with faint tears. They wept loudly and wailed before God's altar. Judah's God was not conflicted by all the tears and weeping, but recognized Judah's dramatic actions were all for show.

Number five: Only one woman for one man. This was God's original plan for His holy people. Let's remember His words way back in Genesis. Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. We have to lead and we have to hold fast.

It means to never let go. No matter what comes in our way, no matter what knocks us on our face, we are to hold fast to who? God. It is true God had given Adam many wives, and he could have given heed many husbands, but he only gave them one. Did he not make them one with a portion of the spirit and their ye in?

And what was the one God seeking? Not the offspring. Submarge yourselves in your spirit, and let none of you be faceless to the life of your view. Could it be that God knew what was best? He knew what the best of the best was, what it would be for Adam and Eve and all the generations to cut behind them.

Staying close to that believer. Be married to the believer. Be married to the one that fears me. God was especially clear with His people about the lifelong commitment demanded by this spiritual covenant. There would be no room for faithlessness in the homes of God's chosen people.

He them out Egypt. He brought them out for a reason. They were His chosen people. They had a purpose. Malachi writes, But for the man who does not love his wife but divorces her, saith the Lord, the God of Israel, covers his garment with violence, says the Lord of hosts, so guard yourselves in your spirit.

And what? Do not be faithless. Do not be faithful about anything that God has showed us, any truth that He has made. So what does that mean today for us to not be faithless? We've seen that word several times in all the reading.

It's kind of hard to dock out fakelessness when we really don't even want to be connected to that word. But in this in this reading for today, god's chosen people had failed. They grieved his heart with disobedience and their poor choices. These choices affected the nation as a whole. It's just like every choice we make is just not the choice that affects us.

The results of that wrong choice had to accept that. I put our kids I'm with us. Those choices that they may affected the nation as a whole and God's people suffered when the poor choices were made. It is as though the darkness of sin sometimes overwhelm God's people. You ever feel like that being watched on it?

Oh my goodness. It overwhelmed God's people then and it overwhelms us today. They lived in a followed world and we live in a followed world. It's sometimes hard to see the truth among the lies. Do ever find yourself just walking for tree and all you're finding in flies are more lies?

To see that which is holy among the unholy and we all search for that light. That light in the darkness. That's what we search for, the light in the darkness. When we study the Old Testament, we read over and over again of the sinfulness of God's people. When we watch the noon, every night we see the sinfulness of our world today.

There are people in our lives who we love and we watch them face sickness. We watch them sometimes face the sickness that leads to death, and our hearts are sad. Our children make really poor choices, and sometimes husbands and wife don't even like each other. When we are overwhelmed by the darkness in our world, we'd have the Word of God to come to, to hold on to, to cherish. The Bible can be trusted because it is written with God's pen, so it only speaks the truth.

There is not one false thing in the Word of God. If we wonder about where to go and where to find truth, it is the Word of God. Remember the words that God gave Moses, the prophets, the Psalmists, all those who wrote the Old Testament. They were sometimes happy, off the parts. The and like, we like them are we're all in searching for good news.

And when when you have a lesson like this, it's kind of a dark lesson that kind of makes you sad a little bit to think that Israel had strayed so far away. I think about King David, he strayed, but he always came back, right? He always seemed back. In Psalm 139, it says, If I say, surely the darkness overwhelms me, and the light around me is as night, even the darkness is not good up to you, O God. The night, it's as bright as day.

For darkness is like, like, see. They can do about the darkness. Malachi knew about the the darkness. All these folk know about the darkness. Everybody in this room knows about the darkness.

But we have a promise that there is a light to come and we can sit and like friend. We're just ready to see that light. We're anxious to see that light shining in the darkness. So we just keep worshiping and thinking and waiting for the Lord Jesus because we know He's coming to where He promised us that. And He of Goliath is going to spell any darkness that transforms your feet.

He He our light in the dark.