THE FEAR OF THE LORD

MALACHI 1-4

Fearing God with the audacity to obey. The temple is rebuilt, the altar is set up, the sacrifices are offered, the feasts and fasts are alike observed, and to these people- with outward form and ritual, perfect to the last minute detail- the prophecy comes, the Divine complaint is made.

The word of the Lord came through Malachi

A Mal 1:2 ¶ "I have loved you," says the LORD. But you say, "How have You loved us?" "{Was} not Esau Jacob's brother?" declares the LORD. "Yet I have loved Jacob;

A Mal 1:6 ¶ " 'A son honors {his} father, and a servant his master. Then if I am a father, where is My honor? And if I am a master, where is My respect?' says the LORD of hosts to you, O priests who despise My name. But you say, 'How have we despised Your name?'

A Mal 1:7 "{You} are presenting defiled food upon My altar. But you say, 'How have we defiled You?' In that you say, 'The table of the LORD is to be despised.'

A Mal 2:17 ¶ You have wearied the LORD with your words. Yet you say, "How have we wearied {Him?}" In that you say, "Everyone who does evil is good in the sight of the LORD, and He delights in them," or, "Where is the God of justice?"

A Mal 3:7 ¶ "From the days of your fathers you have turned aside from My statutes and have not kept {them.} Return to Me, and I will return to you," says the LORD of hosts. "But you say, 'How shall we return?'

A Mal 3:8 ¶ "Will a man rob God? Yet you are robbing Me! But you say, 'How have we robbed You?' In tithes and offerings.

A Mal 3:13 ¶ "Your words have been arrogant against Me," says the LORD. "Yet you say, 'What have we spoken against You?'

They looked at the prophet with mingled astonishment and incredulity, and they say, Wherein! How! What do you mean!

What is the significance of this word “How”?

These people are not in open rebellion against God, nor do they deny His right to offering, but they are laboring under the delusion that because they have brought offerings, they have been true to Him all along.

There is not a language of a people throwing of a yoke and saying, “We will not be loyal”, but a people established in the temple. It is not a language of a people who say “let us cease to sacrifice, and worship; and let us do as we please” but it is the language of a people who say, “we are sacrificing and worshipping to please God,” and yet He says, by the mouth of His servant, “ Ye have wearied Me; ye have robbed and spoken against Me.”

They have been most particular and strict in outward observances, but their heart have been far away from the ceremonials. They have been boasting themselves in their knowledge of truth, responding to that knowledge, mechanically, technically; but their hearts, their lives, their characters, the inwardness of their natures, have been a perpetual contradiction in the eyes of heaven, to the will of God; and when the prophet tells them what God thinks of them, they, with astonishment and impertinence, look into his face and say “we don’t see this at all!”

There are seven complaints against them:-

· Profanity- (1:6-7)- pro- from; fanum- temple ie away from the temple. It is the outward service. Today it is the profanity of the church. Christendom and church are two things. Christendom is the outward eprofession of Christianity which has labeled Christ and driven the mass of the people away from our services and ordinances

• Sacrilege (1:8)- These men are now absolutely offereing to God the blind, and the lame and the sick. Sacrilege is centered in offering God something which costs nothing, because you think God is worth nothing. God looks for the giving at His altar of a gift that costs something.
• Greed (1:10) – These people were opening His doors and kindling fires, because they anticipated gain thereby. There was an ulterior motive in every gift, placed upon the altar, and in every deed performed, and service rendered. The service of God has degenerated into the slavery of a selfish interest. God wants men who will render service to Him for the very love of Him, even though thye never have reward.
• Weariness in service.: (1:13) I believe this is one of the most remarkable signs of the present time. Great principles are revealed in small things and unexpected ways, and Christendom is saying “ The thing is a weariness,” Scores of people in our churches today, who will hear an open opera through and through- and not once only- will put out their watches and becomes anxious and fidgety if a preacher exceeds, by a few minutes’s pace, what is recognized as his allotted time
• Honoring of vice or Treason against the covenant of heaven. (2:17,18)- That is beyond weariness and sniuffing; that is treason of the very worst form. That is a countenancing and an excusing of sin. That is an attempt to gloss evil and treat it lightly as of no importance. When man begin to excuse sin, and to say that it does not matter so much, that God delights in them that do evil, that there is judgment, then he is committing high treason
• Robbery from God (3:8)- People are habitually telling us that God demanded the tithe. God demanded the tithe only as a minimum. Some men have not business to give a tithe of their earnings- they cannot afford it, and there are men who are robbing God by giving only a tithe of their incomes.
• Blasphemy against Him. (3:13,14)- This is the sin of blasphemy. What is blasphemy? The word means to speak injuriously, to say something that shall injure the one against whom you have spoken it; and men have come to use it mostly of Divine things. To blaspheme is to say that which injures God, and His cause and His kingdom. The very worst form of blasphemy is the misrepresentation of God by people who profess to love His name, and look apparently with exuberant delight for the comingof his kingdom. The man who openly blashemes, and who are standing under the sun, looks up at the heavens and says”I hate God” is far less dangerous in the influence of his life than the man who says “I love God” and disobeyes Him

******* THINGS TO BE NOTED FOR PRIEST AND PRIESTESS (2:7-9)

The teachers of the people, the messengers of God, have themselves done despite to the law of God, by proclaiming as a fact, and denying it in their own lives.

The Priest should not only have the knowledge but should keep it, that is, walk in it, be obedient to it, be the embodiment of the knowledge He holds, of which he is the depository for the time being. (2:7-9)

Let's look ourself as an individual and as a church. How is our condition? Let's do a reflection of our life. If God to come now and checks us what will He finds in us?

à 2 Tim 3:1 But realize this, that in the last days difficult times will come.

à 2 Tim 3:2 For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy,

à 2 Tim 3:3 unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, haters of good,

à 2 Tim 3:4 treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God,

I ask you very solemnly to read that description and apply it to the age we live. Take Christendom at large. You have thousands of people who can give you good reasons for belonging to the Church, who have some purity in their lives responding to the claims of Jesus Christ, and seem to be not only maintaining the outward forms, but appear also to hold tenaciously to the truth which is the formative power of the church, and yet whose lives are not in correspondence to the truth they hold.

THOSE WHO FEAR HIS NAME:

But for those who revere my name, the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its wing. And you will go out and leap likes calves released from the stall. Then you will trample down the wicked; they will be ashes under the soles of your feet on the day when I do these things," says the Lord Almighty. (Mal 4:2, 3)

To those who fear His name- the Sun of righteousness and healing. To the proud and all who do wickedly- FIRE! Burning them as stubble.

The sun shall be the scorching heat that will burn, but the Sun will also have healing in His wings. It depends on the character of the men upon whom His light falls whether they shall be burned or healed.

J