For those who may wish to ‘study’ this chapter, the following simple resources are provided for you. Each passage has a four-Part approach to help you take in and think further about what you have read.

Passage: Malachi 2:17-3:5

17 You have wearied the Lord with your words.

‘How have we wearied him?’ you ask.

By saying, ‘All who do evil are good in the eyes of the Lord, and he is pleased with them’ or ‘Where is the God of justice?’

 1 ‘I will send my messenger, who will prepare the way before me. Then suddenly the Lord you are seeking will come to his temple; the messenger of the covenant, whom you desire, will come,’ says the Lord Almighty.

2 But who can endure the day of his coming? Who can stand when he appears? For he will be like a refiner’s fire or a launderer’s soap. 3 He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver; he will purify the Levites and refine them like gold and silver. Then the Lord will have men who will bring offerings in righteousness, 4 and the offerings of Judah and Jerusalem will be acceptable to the Lord, as in days gone by, as in former years.

5 ‘So I will come to put you on trial. I will be quick to testify against sorcerers, adulterers and perjurers, against those who defraud labourers of their wages, who oppress the widows and the fatherless, and deprive the foreigners among you of justice, but do not fear me,’ says the Lord Almighty.

A. Find Out:

1. How had Israel wearied the Lord? v.17
2. What did the Lord say would happen? v.1
3. What will He come to do? v.2,3a
4. What will be the result of this? v.3b,4
5. Who will He come against? v.5

B. Think:

1. What twofold corruption of the truth were they declaring?
2. So what was the Lord going to do about that?
3. What was going to be the end result?

C. Comment:

  The Lord has been chiding Israel in a number of ways. Now He brings that to a peak with a warning of judgement. But first He gives the reason for that: they have twisted the truth. First of all, they say that evil is good, there has been a blurring of right and wrong, so that God is pleased even with those who do wrong. Second, because God had not apparently come in supernatural power after they returned to the Land, they had become cynical and so as sin had increased they had almost denied God’s presence, by questioning, where is the God who was concerned with justice and righteousness?

  The Lord’s answer to this is that the Lord they are asking about will come and His messenger will come. Now at that time they might have thought that this was one and the same person, but within some four hundred years the Messiah would come to his Temple, preceded by his messenger, John the Baptist. Beware the day of his coming, says the Lord, for he will come as a refiner and purifier and he will cleanse away all their sin, so that those who are left will come with a right heart to bring right offerings to the Lord.

  There then follows a list of those whose sins particularly offend the Lord because they sin and do not fear him: those in the occult, those who abuse family life, distort truth, and oppress the weak, all of these will be dealt with.

D. Application:

1. There are times when God appears quiet, but He will judge sin.
2. The call, while we wait for the Lord to come, is to be faithful.

Passage: Malachi 3:6-12

6 ‘I the Lord do not change. So you, the descendants of Jacob, are not destroyed. 7 Ever since the time of your ancestors you have turned away from my decrees and have not kept them. Return to me, and I will return to you,’ says the Lord Almighty.

‘But you ask, “How are we to return?”

8 ‘Will a mere mortal rob God? Yet you rob me.

‘But you ask, “How are we robbing you?”

‘In tithes and offerings. 9 You are under a curse – your whole nation – because you are robbing me. 10 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 there will not be room enough to store it. 11 I will prevent pests from devouring your crops, and the vines in your fields will not drop their fruit before it is ripe,’ says the Lord Almighty. 12 ‘Then all the nations will call you blessed, for yours will be a delightful land,’ says the Lord Almighty.

A. Find Out:

1. How does the Lord say He has not changed? v.6
2. What does He say about their past and their present? v.7
3. What does He say they are doing? v.8
4. What does He say is their present state? v.9
5. How should they change that? v.10
6. How then will the Lord act and with what result? v.11,12

B. Think:

1. What do you think was the point of the Lord saying He does not change?
2. What was His charge against Israel in this passage?
3. How did relationship with God have practical outworkings?

C. Comment:

  The good news for Israel was that the Lord does not change. He is still a God of loving kindness who waits for His people to respond. If He wasn’t, He would have completely destroyed this people. So He is still waiting for their response, and He calls them to return to Him (v.7). Their answer is to ask, how? The Lord’s answer to that is, “Stop robbing me.” “We’re robbing you?” they ask, “How do we rob you?” By not obeying the Law of tithes!

  The Law of tithes required a tenth of the crops, herds or flocks of the people of God be presented to the Lord, or more specifically, His priests. It was the Lord’s way of providing for the priesthood. This people had obviously not been doing that. It was part of the covenant, the agreed way of working between the people and God. Failure to keep the covenant invoked a curse on the people, and that would have negative practical implications. (See Deut 28:15 on). Probably their lack of giving was as a result of lack of belief that the Lord was still with them, hence He needs to speak to them through His prophet. Test me out, He says, and you’ll see you can’t out-give me. Obey the covenant and receive the blessing that goes with obedience (See Deut 28:1-14), a prosperous and ‘blessed’ people!

D. Application:

1. Our faith level is indicated by our giving level.
2. The material world is as much God’s as the spiritual world.

Passage: Malachi 3:13-18

13 ‘You have spoken arrogantly against me,’ says the Lord.

‘Yet you ask, “What have we said against you?”

14 ‘You have said, “It is futile to serve God. What do we gain by carrying out his requirements and going about like mourners before the Lord Almighty? 15 But now we call the arrogant blessed. Certainly evildoers prosper, and even when they put God to the test, they get away with it.”’

16 Then those who feared the Lord talked with each other, and the Lord listened and heard. A scroll of remembrance was written in his presence concerning those who feared the Lord and honoured his name.

17 ‘On the day when I act,’ says the Lord Almighty, ‘they will be my treasured possession. I will spare them, just as a father has compassion and spares his son who serves him. 18 And you will again see the distinction between the righteous and the wicked, between those who serve God and those who do not.

A. Find Out:

1. What does the Lord then say they have said? v.13
2. What had they wrongly said? v.14
3. What three groups of people now resulted? v.15
4. Yet who did the Lord observe? v.16
5. How will the Lord treat them? v.17
6. So what distinction will be made? v.18

B. Think:

1. How had Israel got into a negative way of thinking?
2. So what effect had that had on the nation?
3. Yet what was the Lord going to do about it?

C. Comment:

  The Lord now comes back to draw attention to the attitude that is prevailing among this people. He’s dealt with a number of things that were their behaviour, but behaviour is the outworking of thinking and so now He exposes their wrong thinking.

  He starts by challenging what they have been saying about Him. They had fallen into a state of cynicism saying, there is no point in serving God, nothing is happening, He’s not here, let’s do our own thing! We’re fed up going about like a bunch of mourners constantly in a state of woe.

If this was in post-exile times, it is easy to see how this came about. The glory of the return is now in the past and they seem to be just an ordinary bunch of people carrying out religious duties. Where is the Lord? Well actually He is waiting for the right time to bring His Messiah into their midst but that will be some four hundred years yet.

When God is not moving dramatically, we are just called to be faithful, and it may not be glorious. The temptation is to give up, become cynical and fall into wrong thinking. That is what they had done.

  Yet there are those, a minority, who held to their reverent belief in God (v.16) and the Lord has noted these. When a time of separating out comes, they will be clearly distinguished from the grumblers. The truth will be seen.

D. Application:

1. If God doesn’t seem active, remain faithful.
2. Resist cynicism which leads on to other wrong thinking.