Malachi begins his prophetic ministry with the words, the burden of the word of the Lord to Israel by Malachi, I have loved you, says the Lord. God will always get the last word. Malachi's book is the final prophetic voice from the Old Testament. It is that last word, so to speak, that concludes the Old Testament and anticipates the New Testament, which opens some 400 years later. Malachi serves as a clear link between the Testaments. The final words of Malachi, The final words of Malachi contain God's promise to send the prophet Elijah before the great day of the Lord. And then the opening scene of the New Testament is the angelic promise of the birth of John the Baptist who comes in the spirit and power of Elijah to prepare the way for the Lord. Malachi is God's last word in the Old Testament. But that's not the kind of last word God intends to have with his people. The four chapters of the prophet Malachi represent a running debate between the Lord God of Israel and the people of Israel. Although in fairness, The people of Israel never so much as open their mouth in these debates. God is the one who makes their arguments for them. Have you ever had an argument with someone and they never let you talk? They'd bring up a complaint, they'd make their case, and then without catching a breath, they would say, I know what you're thinking, and then they would make your case for you in the flimsiest way possible before slapping it down, bringing the hammer and smashing it. If you are familiar with that kind of argument, then you're going to be on familiar footing with the prophet Malachi. The difference here is that the Lord God of Israel is the one who's bringing the hammer. He's starting the debate. He's making all the arguments. And he really does know what you're thinking. There are six cycles of debate through this book of Malachi. And here's how each one goes. First, the Lord God makes an assertion, some statement of truth that is really aimed at starting an argument. And then the response of the people is recorded through the words and perspective of God with things like, yet you say. And then finally, God, unsurprisingly, always gets the last word. That happens six times through this book of Malachi. I wanna show you how these unfold. We're not going to hit every question that gets asked, because there's actually about 25 separate questions through these four chapters. But I do want you to see all of the six main sections of debate that get cycled through. Debate number one begins with an unexpected argument starter. Unless you think the words, I love you, is aimed to be an argument starter. Verse two, I have loved you, says the Lord, is a simple statement of truth, but the people respond with criticism and incredulity, right? Yet you say, in verse two, in what way have you loved us? Like, that's easy to say, you have loved us, but how can you prove it? The mindset of the people in Malachi's day was that they were actually doing very well in serving the Lord God, but as a result, they were getting the short end of the stick. And by the way, to understand the message of Malachi, you always need to keep in mind this is a message to people who were really very religious. When it comes to God saying, I love you, they think, Well, there's plenty of evidence that we love you, but how is it that you have loved us? I mean, here's their situation. They're thinking, well, here we are. We have returned from the captivity for you. We have rebuilt this temple for you. We've reestablished these sacrifices that we're bringing offerings for you, but what is it that we've gotten from you? We're not a strong nation. We're not a wealthy nation. We're teetering on the edge of destruction. We're waiting for this Messiah you've promised and he's not come. You have loved us. Well, we're not feeling the love. Through verse five, God answers with an appeal to his historic goodness and his covenant love. Even as he rightly hated Esau, the Lord God inexplicably loved Jacob, who he renamed Israel, and he made a nation from Jacob, and he blessed and preserved that nation. Yet this section also teaches that the love of God for you is not all about you. Listen, you are all about you. I'm all about me. This is the way we are as humans. But the Lord has got more going on. He loves you with a perfect love, and at the same time, at the end of verse five, he says the Lord is magnified beyond the borders of Israel, as if to say, well, I do love you with a perfect love, but there is more happening than what's happening right here. Debate number two begins in verse six. A son honors his father, a servant his master. If then I am the father, where is my honor? And if I am a master, where is my reverence? Says the Lord of hosts to you priests who despise my name. Yet you say, in what way have we despised your name? The Lord begins an argument with the nation's religious leaders, the priests, arguing that their actions and their attitudes are actually acts of defiance against God. They have, God says, despised the name of the Lord. Of course, they would never see it that way. For the priests, their whole life revolved around serving the Lord. But as you continue reading, you'll find out they've been offering sacrificial animals that were blind, that were lame, that were crippled, that were diseased, right? These were the animals that they were offering in the temple. In fact, they were sacrificing to the Lord the animals that nobody wanted. And in verse eight, God says, essentially, You wouldn't dare prepare one of those for your governor, but you're gonna give it to God? Now, let me just ask a question here. Why were the priests offering lame, blind, diseased animals as sacrifices? Well, the answer is because the people were bringing them lame, blind, diseased animals in order to sacrifice. We don't have time this morning to go into a whole theology of animal sacrifice in the Old Testament, but suffice it to say, God has his standards. He expected to be met and there was a reason for it. The sacrifice of these animals was to picture the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross. And so they were to be perfect, spotless, unblemished, as Jesus is perfect, spotless, and unblemished. The sacrifice was also supposed to be, brace yourself, a sacrifice. Instead, in the name of worship, the people were bringing the rotten leftovers that they didn't want anyway, right? If they had some animal that was born and it was blind, it was lame, it was diseased, it was gonna die, they were like, oh, that's the one I should take to the temple and offer to the Lord. I'll keep the good ones, right? In the name of sacrifice, they were making the least sacrifice they could possibly make. and the priests were accepting it. When they got there, the priests were giving the people a proverbial pat on the head, reassuring them that they were really doing a good job here, and somehow both the priests and the people had the gall to be outraged at the idea that God wasn't gonna be pleased with that. Y'all, we're gonna find that Malachi is filled with modern application. Listen, pastors are not priests, but they are similar in the sense of being religious leaders that are responsible for others. And if a church is filled with people who serve God with only what is convenient, with the time and effort and stuff that they really didn't have anything to do with anyway, Pastors have no business patting people on their collective heads and reassuring them that half-hearted, sacrifice-free worship is acceptable to God. And certainly, we've got no authority to respond to the half-hearted efforts of people with half-hearted efforts of our own. God looked at this sort of half-hearted, unwilling to really sacrifice worship from the people, and the fact that they were getting the proverbial approval of a bunch of half-hearted religious leaders, and God's conclusion to this was, you have despised my name. Debate number three includes one of those lines that feuding husbands and wives have used throughout human history. Have you ever found yourself in what you thought were the closing moments of an argument only to find that suddenly fuel gets added to the fire with the words, and another thing? Well, we get that in this third debate. In chapter two, verses 10 through 16, you will see in verse 13 the words, and this is the second thing that you do. Malachi 2, 10 through 16 outlines two related complaints. And we'll not go through it all this morning, but essentially the people had violated the covenant relationship with the Lord their God by violating the covenant relationships they were to maintain with other people. Specifically, this section relates to idolatry and to divorce. Since the law of Moses allowed for divorce, the sinful hearts of the people begin abusing the law. God says that the men had begun, in verse 14, dealing treacherously with the lives of their youth, their wife by covenant, their wife by agreement and promise, and they had instead taken up to marrying, back up in verse 11, the daughters of foreign gods. In other words, they were abandoning the covenant people and they were marrying into idol-worshiping people and accepting that idolatry into the family. And so by violating the covenant with other people, they were also violating the covenant relationship with God himself. Such behavior is equated, in verse 17, with violence and treachery, and God says He hates it. Debate four begins in Malachi chapter two, verse 17. You have wearied the Lord with your words. Y'all, just imagine that for a second. Think of what this is actually saying. You have exhausted the all-powerful creator of heaven and earth because you just won't stop talking. Chapter two, verse 17. You have wearied the Lord with your words, yet you say, in what way 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? Can a person weary God? In a literal sense, You can't. God is all powerful. He is inexhaustible. He is not going to get tired. And yet here in this symbolic language, I think we're to understand that when we start criticizing the Lord God's management of world affairs, it is exhausting. Why do good things happen to bad people? If God is just, why doesn't he fix this? Where is God at right now when I need him? Y'all, it's tiresome. This thinking is just riddled with errors. The people were assuming that they were righteous, They were presuming that they were the judge of all that's unrighteous. They insist that the Lord God must act on their own standards of righteousness in complete and unwavering justice immediately. And they are wrong on all counts. They were not righteous. They were not the judges who get to administer justice. And most importantly, it is foolish when a person insists that God has to act in justice toward them, especially immediately. That foolishness is that a person would think that when they see the wrath of God poured out, that God's gonna be angry with, well, those people. Sorry, everybody on this side of the building, you're getting it today. Those people. Right? Not us people. Right? God's mad at those people. But when the vial of God's wrath is poured out, you find out, no, it is actually directly over your head. Do not assume that you get to administer God's justice and do not dare insist on God's justice. You should strive for nothing more than being the grateful recipient of God's mercy. It's foolish to insist on God's justice. Debate number five is found in Malachi chapter three, verses six through 12, and it comes up with a, it doubles up on the complaints and questions. At the end of verse seven, return to me and I will return to you, says the Lord of hosts. But you say, in what way or how shall we return? And then in verse eight, will a man rob God? Yet you have robbed me. But you say, in what way have we robbed you? When the Lord God here appeals to the people and says return to me, It is an echo of the prophet Hosea. Hosea, in chapter 14, verses one and two, says, O Israel, return to the Lord your God, for you have stumbled because of your iniquity. Take words with you and return to the Lord. Say to him, take away all iniquity, receive us graciously, for we will offer the sacrifice of our lips. Hosea lived out that that symbolic relationship between God and the nation of Israel when God told Hosea, right, go marry a prostitute, marry a woman who's gonna be unfaithful to you, and you love her anyway, and you keep taking her back despite all of the things that she's done against you. And Hosea says, this is what the nation should do. Return to the Lord your God, take words, apologize, ask for forgiveness. but the people didn't listen to the appeal of God through Hosea, and they ultimately ended up enduring God's judgment and being taken into captivity. Now, having returned from captivity, reestablishing worship at the temple, the people seem to hear this appeal even though the Lord God repeats it. multiple times. It was through Hosea before the captivity. Most recently we've seen it in Zechariah. In Zechariah chapter 1 verse 3, And now the same appeal is being made to the prophet Malachi. Like, it makes no sense to these people. They can't grasp it. Right, return to me, like how am I supposed to return to God? We should not read this as people expressing this in some sort of sorrowful repentance and asking the Lord how, right, well what means can we employ in order to return to you because we really want to. Instead, this how, how do we return to you is more like how can you say that? Right, think about their situation. They would say, well, we've returned to the Lord because we returned from captivity. We returned to the Lord by rebuilding the temple. We've returned to the Lord by bringing sacrifices for his name. How much more returning can we do? You're asking us to do something. What is it we can do that we're not doing already? This is the mindset of the people. We are already as close to God as we can be. Now the ball is in his court to do something if we're gonna be closer. And so the second complaint comes in in verse eight. Really, you're as close as can be? You say that while you're stealing from me? This is unthinkable. Can a man rob God? Stealing from God. How is that even possible? Well, the answer is in chapter 3 verse 8, by withholding tithes and offerings. Listen, you don't have to reach up into heaven and chip away at the streets of gold and leave a pothole in the pavement of glory in order to be stealing from the Lord. You steal from God every time you don't give from yourself to him all the things that are rightfully owed. When God requires a tithe, when he requires 10%, you give it. He's not asking for more than what's due. He's not asking for what's unreasonable. All 100% of your income came from God. He's allowing you to keep 90% of it. When God asks for an offering, you give it. When God asks for all your heart and all your soul and all your mind and all your strength, withholding any part of that is robbing your creator. And don't say, I'm as close to God as I can be when you are robbing God at the same time. Debate number six picks up in chapter three, verse 13, and it continues through the beginning part of chapter four. Chapter three, verse 13, your words have been harsh against me, says the Lord. Yet you say, what have we spoken against you? you have said, it is useless to serve God. What prophet is it that we have kept his ordinance and that we have walked as mourners before the Lord of hosts? When the Lord here says, Your words have been harsh against me. That is a difficult turn of phrase to translate into English because in Hebrew it sort of has some meaning that's hard to just put into simple English words. The King James Version says your words have been stout against me. The ESV says your words have been hard against me. The NIV says you have spoken arrogantly against me. All of those are sort of contained in the idea here. This word harsh, means to show strength or courage or severity. But I want you to note how this dialogue unfolds in verse 13. The Lord God says, you've been speaking harsh, right? You've been speaking strong words against me. But the people respond with, what have we spoken against you? Not, they don't say, what did we say that was too harsh? But what they say, and we have to assume with all sincerity, what they say is, what have we spoken against you at all? To understand the argumentative dialogue here, again, you have to put yourself into the mindset of the original audience and understand that as the Lord God makes these complaints, every complaint catches the people completely off guard. They are shocked by them, right? We look at it in hindsight with critical eyes, willing to find fault because that's, well, those are the other folks. But what we can see is that they should have known that their sort of tepid, indifferent, hollow worship was an offense to God, but really they had no idea. The best way to understand this book is to know that the response of the people is entirely sincere when they respond. You realize you can be sincere and still be sincerely wrong. The people are entirely sincere when they respond to God with What do you mean we've wearied God? What do you mean we've robbed God? How can you say we've despised the name of the Lord? What have we ever spoken against Him? What do you mean return to God? We didn't go anywhere. If you could go back in time and talk to these folks, you'd find they did not consider themselves to be in open rebellion against God. Here are people who had come back from Babylonian captivity. They had repopulated the promised land. They'd heard the prophets Haggai and Zechariah. They had completed that temple rebuilding project. They reestablished worship so that they're bringing sacrifices into the temple, bringing the offerings to the priests. Many of them would have been part of Nehemiah's wall building project. And so they think this new prophet Malachi, as he comes along and he suggests that God is anything less than completely satisfied with Israel, this guy has to be out of his ever-loving mind. If you ask them, they were fulfilling their side of covenant faithfulness. They were serving the Lord exactly as the Lord demanded, but in the process, here's what else they thought, verse 14. Chapter three, verse 14. You have said, it is useless to serve God. What profit is it that we have kept his ordinance and that we've walked as mourners before the Lord of hosts? They have said in their hearts and minds, if not write out loud, We're keeping our end of the bargain. When is God gonna keep his? Right, we've got the checklist of what God requires. We've marked everything off the list. What good has it done? Serving God is useless. Serving God is pointless. It's empty. We have gotten nothing out of it. How do you get through to that kind of people? People who know what great things God has done for them in the past, how He has chosen them, how He has shown His love for them. People who know God's promises for the future, that they are right now awaiting the salvation of God's coming Messiah. They're in that process of waiting. They seem to have lost the enthusiasm to serve the God who loves them. People who are so sure that they are right with God, that they are pleasing to God, that to suggest to them that any of their behavior is a disappointment to God comes as a complete and utter shock. They are incredulous at the notion that God expects more of them. People who are so clueless and checked out that they are sure God will accept whatever lukewarm leftovers they feel like offering because surely, after all we've done, God can't expect real sacrifice and worship from us now. People who at heart question the love of God, insult the name of God, presume on the justice of God, question the plan of God, and then stay with a straight face, what have we ever said against God? How do you get through to those kind of people? Well, hopefully it will happen this morning as someone gets up in the pulpit and opens the words of the prophet Malachi and asks, do you think maybe you are this kind of people? Do you know the great things that God has done for you in the past when he's chosen you and he has shown his love to you? Do you know God's promise for the future that you are awaiting the second coming of the great Messiah King Jesus? But in the process, as you're waiting, you've lost enthusiasm to serve the Lord God who loves you. Are you so certain that you are right with God, that you are pleasing God, that for anyone to suggest that your behavior is disappointing to him comes as a complete and utter shock to you? Do you really think God's willing to accept the leftover, lukewarm whatevers of your life that you wanna bring him that's not really a sacrifice, or does he expect meaningful, sacrificial living from you in order to serve and worship him? This is the challenge of the prophet Malachi. As he comes to people like us with a burden from the Lord, a burden in the form of 23 separate probing questions throughout this book, Right, with Malachi, there's plenty of straightforward teaching. There is plenty of do this, stop doing that, and there are even prophetic glimpses of the coming Messiah, of Jesus who is going to save his people from their sins, but the essence of Malachi's book is to just pepper us with questions. It's one thing to come out and tell people You know, God says you're indifferent and lazy and disappointing. Like, okay, that's sort of an outside-in approach. It bombards people with facts and it leaves them to decide whether or not they agree with the conclusion that you've reached. But Malachi instead comes with questions and the goal of the questions is to make the reader come to their own conclusion about themselves. And if we take these questions seriously and answer these questions honestly, we're more likely to come to a life-changing conviction when the answer to these questions comes from our own hearts and our own minds and we really see this rare opportunity for honest self-evaluation and change. It's not easy. Y'all, you go through Malachi and you take these questions seriously, it is not easy, but it's worthwhile. It will hurt. But when it hurts, remember where it started. The burden of the word of the Lord to Israel by Malachi. I have loved you, says the Lord. And in fact, he loves us too much to let us just keep going our way without questioning ourselves about our relationship with him.