Sara Maitland, a British author, tells about an interesting experience she had, in her book A Big Enough God: “A few years ago, just a day or so after a York Minister was struck by lightning, I was on my way to the local post office near my home, which is in a wretchedly poor part of Hackney, when I met an elderly woman. She was most distressed by this bolt from the heavens, this “act of God” as the insurance people call it (which alone gives you pause for thought). She was very upset. Did I think, she asked, that God had done it on purpose, as some newspapers were speculating? The post was about to leave, and I was in a hurry, but how can anyone resist such a subject? No, I said, I didn’t really think so, did she? No, she said, she didn’t really think that God was like that. There was a pause, and I was poised to escape. Then she added, in what I can only describe as a tone of affectionate criticism, “But he should have been more careful; he should have known there’d be talk.’”
There was plenty of talk during the time of the prophet Malachi. People were talking about God in a critical way that was less than affectionate. It was a time which was different than most of the other prophets. Malachi was the last of the Old Testament prophets who preached around 430 B.C. His ministry was to the grandchildren of the people who had originally returned to Jerusalem after the time of exile in Babylon. The first exiles had returned over 150 years before, and the temple had been rebuilt almost a century earlier. Babylon had destroyed Jerusalem in 586 B.C., and burned the beautiful temple built by King Solomon. Solomon had built the temple at a cost of what today would be around $15,000,000. The temple was extremely ornate with walls which were covered with pure gold. The original exiles had been away from their homeland for 70 years, and when they returned to Jerusalem their stunning temple was only a burned out shell. The few exiles who had returned to Jerusalem were living in abject poverty. There was no way they could rebuild the temple to anything near its former glory. The whole city of Jerusalem was a mess one hundred years after a crude temple had been reconstructed, and the people were dejected and depressed. Their spirits were in ruins as well as the city. They were discouraged and ready to give up. Families were breaking up. Those who had a little money or power were oppressing others and resorting to violence. Temple worship was a farce. Only the absolute minimum of religious practice was observed. People felt that God had let them down and they were mad at him. They went through the motions of worship, but their hearts were not in it.
Into this depressing atmosphere stepped the prophet Malachi. And the first words to come out of the mouth of Malachi from God were: “I have loved you, says the Lord” (Malachi 1:2). The people must have laughed in his face at those words. They were cynical. “How have you loved us?” they asked. “If you loved us, our families would never have been taken into exile. Our city would not have been destroyed and the temple would not have been burned. If you loved us, we would not be living in these conditions now. Pardon us if you don’t seem very loving.” These people were obviously alienated from God. The book of Malachi teaches a great deal about people who are alienated from God. The first mark of a people who are alienated from God is: They treat God with contempt and justify their own behavior. Any objective observer looking at what was happening in Jerusalem would be able to understand that the people were experiencing these conditions because they had abandoned God when things became difficult. Their difficulties led to disappointment with God and their disappointment eventually led to outright anger. Many people stopped going to the temple for worship altogether, and those who did attend gave God the leftovers of their lives and love. They offered their lambs as a sacrifice, but only the weak and diseased ones. Their lips formed prayers, but their hearts were far from God. They blamed him for everything and themselves for nothing. They forgot that the destruction of Jerusalem, and the exile which followed, was a result of the sin and rebellion of their fathers. And now they were headed down the same path that their fathers had traveled. They were practicing violence and unfaithfulness. They had abandoned God and blamed him for all their troubles at the same time. They became hardened cynics who lived only for themselves.
Elie Wiesel, the famous Jewish writer who survived the holocaust, retells the story of Sodom and Gomorrah: “A just man comes to Sodom hoping to save the city. He pickets. What else can he do? He goes from street to street, from marketplace to marketplace, shouting, ‘Men and women, repent. What you are doing is wrong. It will kill you; it will destroy you.’ They laugh, but he goes on shouting, until one day a child stops him. ‘Poor stranger, don’t you see it’s useless?’ ‘Yes,’ the just man replies. ‘Then why do you go on?’ the child asks. ‘In the beginning,’ he says, ‘I was convinced that I would change them. Now I go on shouting because I don’t want them to change me.”’ That is the way you have to live in a cynical culture that has lost its moral sanity.
The second mark of a people who are alienated from God is: Their religious leaders are corrupt. God said to them, “A son honors his father, and a servant his master. If I am a father, where is the honor due me? If I am a master, where is the respect due me? It is you, O priests, who show contempt for my name.” The priests ask, “How have we shown contempt for your name?” Then the Lord said, “You place defiled food on my altar.” They quickly respond with another question: “How have we defiled you?” And God’s answer was, “By saying that the Lord’s table is contemptible. When you bring blind animals for sacrifice, is that not wrong? When you sacrifice crippled or diseased animals, is that not wrong? Try offering them to your governor! Would he be pleased with you? Would he accept you?” (Malachi 1:6-8). The priests were saying that their ministry was a burden. They sniffed at the offerings contemptuously.
The priests were going along with the halfhearted worship of the people. They were not speaking out against it, in fact, they were going along with it. They did not want to be bothered. When they went through the motions of temple worship it was a charade. Their heart was not in it. Both the people and priests were alienated from God. And God responded that he wished their counterfeit worship would cease rather than carry on the pretense. He said, “Oh, that one of you would shut the temple doors, so that you would not light useless fires on my altar! . . .‘When you bring injured, crippled or diseased animals and offer them as sacrifices, should I accept them from your hands?’ says the Lord. ‘Cursed is the cheat who has an acceptable male in his flock and vows to give it, but then sacrifices a blemished animal to the Lord.’”
Here we have a group of people who could not understand why God would not answer their prayers, and at the same time were treating worship as a burden and cheating God. They made promises they did not fulfill. Worship was an obligation, not a joy. But when God did not listen to them they began to cry and wail, seemingly unaware that they had not met the conditions that God required. They were what we call “C and E” Christians. They came to church on Christmas and Easter and expected God to be with them every day. They were members of the church, but you never saw them the Sunday after they joined. They were baptized, but never walked in obedience to God. They went through the rituals without ever having their hearts changed. But that did not keep them from having high expectations of God. They did not want the burden of true worship, but they wanted all the benefits and blessings.
The third mark of a people who are alienated from God is: Their relationships are marked by injustice, violence and oppression. Their poor treatment of God was not the only thing that was wrong with these people. When people stop loving God they no longer have the ability to love other people. When you are alienated from God you begin to forget about things like love, forgiveness, kindness and mercy, because those are qualities that you develop through a relationship with God. When you forget about God you forget about natural affection, because he is the One who reminds you to practice love. Violence is the mark of a society which has abandoned God. Alienation from God is the systemic cause of many of the problems in a culture. Can this be the root cause of the violence we see in our culture where children kill other children? Can this be the cause of our fascination with violence in our music and movies? Can this be the cause of the rage on our roads and in our homes? Psychologists have coined a new term for the kind of people they are seeing: “Rageaholics.” When rage becomes the norm we can be sure we are moving away from God.
The fourth mark of a people who are alienated from God is: Their families are breaking apart. The people were not only mistreating each other, they were mistreating members of their own families, and their families were breaking apart. Malachi said, “You flood the Lord’s altar with tears. You weep and wail because he no longer pays attention to your offerings or accepts them with pleasure from your hands.” The people asked, “Why? Why does God no longer hear our prayers and pay attention to our worship?” And then Malachi said, “It is because the Lord is acting as the witness between you and the wife of your youth, because you have broken faith with her, though she is your partner, the wife of your marriage covenant.”
A right relationship with God should result in a right relationship with other people, especially those in our own home. God is watching how we treat other people, and the way we treat others affects our relationship with God. Here is what the Bible says about relationships: “Husbands, in the same way be considerate as you live with your wives, and treat them with respect as the weaker partner and as heirs with you of the gracious gift of life, so that nothing will hinder your prayers. Finally, all of you, live in harmony with one another; be sympathetic, love as brothers, be compassionate and humble. Do not repay evil with evil or insult with insult, but with blessing, because to this you were called so that you may inherit a blessing” (1 Peter 3:7-9). You cannot have a good relationship with God if you are treating your family poorly.
One of the disturbing statistics to come out lately is that divorce is nearly as common among church members as it is among those who have never been a part of the church — nearly 50%. This does not please God, and it certainly is not his will for us. Love and commitment are to be the marks of any disciple of Jesus Christ. They are the signature marks of our relationship with God and others as well. Jesus said, “‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate” (Mark 10:7-9). Malachi said, “Has not the Lord made them one? In flesh and spirit they are his. And why one? Because he was seeking godly offspring. So guard yourself in your spirit, and do not break faith with the wife of your youth. ‘I hate divorce,’ says the Lord God of Israel, ‘and I hate a man’s covering himself with violence as well as with his garment,’ says the Lord Almighty. So guard yourself in your spirit, and do not break faith” (Malachi 2:13-16).
What is the purpose of families? The purpose is because God is seeking godly offspring! That means that God expects us to rear our children as godly people. Not just gymnasts and musicians, not just scholars and athletes, but godly people. That should be their first and foremost quality. Your child may be a success at sports and scholarship, but if they have no relationship with God what does it mean? I can remember well a family in one of the former churches I served which took their son to hockey practice every Sunday. He turned out to be a fine hockey player, but he is alienated from God.
The fifth mark of a people who are alienated from God is: God calls them to return. In spite of the unfaithfulness of these people, the Lord said to them, “Return to me, and I will return to you, says the Lord Almighty.” Now they ask another question: “How are we to return?” (Malachi 3:7). Then God reiterates what he had said before. If they are to return to him they have to stop robbing him. But they asked, “How do we rob you?” (Malachi 3:8). The Lord said to them, “‘In tithes and offerings . . . Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. Test me in this,’ says the Lord Almighty, ‘and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that you will not have room enough for it’” (Malachi 3:10). God invites them to put him to the test. Their crops had failed and nothing they did seemed to prosper. But there was a reason for it. They were robbing God. They were not giving him their best. They thought they were getting ahead, but they were only getting farther behind. Their trust was not in God, but in the things they could see.
The people had been saying, “It is futile to serve God. What did we gain by carrying out his requirements and going about like mourners before the Lord Almighty? But now we call the arrogant blessed. Certainly the evildoers prosper, and even those who challenge God escape” (Malachi 3:13-15). But then something began to happen in the hearts of the people. Those who feared the Lord began to talk to each other and encourage each other in their faith. A “scroll of remembrance” was written with the names of those who committed themselves to honoring the Lord in their lives. They were not concerned about what others thought or did, they were going to follow the Lord in love and faithfulness. They finally stopped offering excuses and pleading ignorance, and committed themselves to doing what they knew they should have been doing all along.
The closing words of the book are the promise of God: “See, I will send you the prophet Elijah before that great and dreadful day of the Lord comes. He will turn the hearts of the fathers to their children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers” (Malachi 4:5-6). When people’s hearts are changed relationships are renewed. Families are restored. Justice prevails, and a relationship with God is revived. Lives are made new.
Rodney J. Buchanan
October 1, 2000
MORE QUESTIONS
Malachi 1:14
“‘I have loved you,’ says the Lord.’ But you ask, ‘How have you loved us?’” (Malachi 1:2).
The eight questions the people asked were:
1. “How have you loved us?” (1:2).
2. “How have we shown contempt for your name?” (1:6).
3. “How have we defiled you?” (1:7).
4. “Why [does the Lord no longer pay attention to our offerings]?” (2:14).
5. “How have we wearied him?” (2:17).
6. “How are we to return?” (3:7).
7. “How do we rob you?” (3:8).
8. “What have we said against you?” (3:13).
The marks of a people alienated from God are:
1. They treat God with ______________________________ and ______________________________their own behavior.
2. Their religious leaders are _______________________ .
3. Their relationships are marked by ________________ , _______________________ and ________________________ .
4. Their families are ________________________________ .
5. God calls them __________________________________ .
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION (Oct 1, 2000)
1. *What excuses do you most often hear for people’s bad behavior?
2. Why do some people blame God when things go wrong instead of accepting responsibility for their own poor choices?
3. *Sin is an almost unknown concept to many today. How did we come to the place where we do not even understand why God is offended at our behavior? How can Christians relate to people under the influence of this worldview?
4. Why is sin serious?
5. *Read Isaiah 59:2. Why does God react in this way?
6. *How does a person return to God after moral failure? How can a nation return to moral sanity? Read Acts 3:19-20.
7. Why is the tithe given such an important place in our relationship with God?
8. *How can we be a part of our nation’s return to God?
9. What signs do you see that people are sensing their need of God and a return to moral sanity?
10. How are you growing in your own spiritual life? How is your growth affecting your relationship with your family, work, giving, serving and other relationships?
