Well friends, we're going to turn to look at these words in Malachi this evening. We've begun to open up this book a little bit and we've seen how Malachi has a real burden for the work of the Lord and for the word of the Lord and we spoke about that, how it was a responsibility. It was a heavy burden and yet in another sense it was a joyful burden as well because as he As he brings the word of God, and certainly later on in the book we will see he comes with some wonderful words of blessing and prophecy and grace. But he begins by having to deal with the murmuring and the complaining of the Jews, of the people of his day. And God comes with his words to them, I have loved you, and yet they don't seem to understand that, they don't seem to appreciate that. And we looked at a little bit of the history the other day to see how that was. They'd returned to their land after the captivity. They'd known much blessing to start with, but now they'd forgotten the God who had delivered them, and they began to settle down, and the promised prosperity which they had expected seemed a long time coming. They'd been able to rebuild the temple. Admittedly, that had taken some time, and you know the account given in in Ezra and in Nehemiah, and then the walls rebuilt, but it took a long time, a number of years, and they didn't seem to be as progressing as they expected, and things were hard, and the Messiah had not yet come, in fact the Messiah wasn't going to come for another 400 years, but they didn't know that. And they began to question God's dealings and they began to doubt God. They began to doubt God's faithfulness. They began to doubt God's power. But of course, most of the problem was their own unbelief. It was their lack of faith in God that had produced this problem, this difficulty. It wasn't that God had failed them. It was that they had lost confidence in God. And I trust, dear friends, we are not in that position where we've lost confidence in God. But it's very easy to do that, isn't it, when things seem to just plod on day after day and we don't see the kind of blessing, the kind of progress that we want to see, we don't see lots of people being converted, we don't see the church growing and swelling and planting other churches and the work going as we hear it's happening in some parts of the world. And it's very easy to become depressed and discouraged. Well Malachi comes with this burden of the Word of the Lord, God's message to the people. A burden which is indeed a message of judgement upon sin and unbelief. But it's also a message of restoration and of encouragement. Malachi is bowed down with the responsibility of the message. Now, friends, it might be, for those of you who go out and who preach, maybe you know something of this, but for maybe those of you who are not used to speaking and preaching in public, maybe you're not as aware of this, but there is a tremendous responsibility. I'm sure you recognize the principle behind, but it does come as quite a burden. Folks sometimes say to me, you know, you've been in the ministry many years, you know, you must be okay. They don't realise that after all the years you get to know, you get to appreciate the burden as it were, the pressure, and you know how to conceal it as it were so that you don't look flustered. But there is tremendous responsibility in preaching God's Word. It's a solemn matter to bring the Word of God to men and women and to be responsible for the Word of God. Wasn't it, I think it was one of the Bonners, I don't know whether it was Horatius or Andrew Bonner, I can't remember, but one of them was said on one occasion, was speaking to a friend who had was a minister of a fairly small church and he was arguing about this and saying, oh, he said, if only I had a much bigger church. And whichever it was, Andrew or Horatio, one of them turned to him and said, well, they said, look, 25 souls is a lot to give an account for before the throne of grace. You understand? And it is a burden, and one does feel that, and you know, one is responsible in that way, and it is a burden in that sense. A message, and we're coming with a message of judgment upon people who don't repent. and a message of mercy and joy to those who do. And it's a solemn matter. And people don't like to be told that they are sinners in the sight of God. Our natural heart reacts against that kind of thing. And having spoken of God's love and God's choice, He knows he now has to deal with these particular issues and he turns now firstly to deal with the priests, the representatives of God's people. They are the spokesmen for God's people and particularly he is dealing with them in these verses here. They were more responsible than the rest of the people because they shouldered the responsibility of leading the people of God and bringing them to God. And as Malachi addresses them, so he is teaching the people important lessons as well. So it's both and. He's speaking particularly to the priests. But the priests and the people together have dishonoured God. And they have sinned against God and they have not repented. And unrepentant sin can only lead to judgement. But it's not too late to seek for mercy. The priests are God's messengers. and they should have led the people rightly. Look what he says in verse 7 to them. You offer defiled food on my altar but say in what way have we defiled you? By saying the table of the Lord is contemptible. Now it takes a brave man to criticise the priests in the Old Testament. So what does Malachi do? Well he begins by using a metaphor that they would understand. Verse 6, a son honours his father. Now we looked at that last week with regard to God's honour and that's right and proper. But you can imagine now, he's been speaking to the people and he turns to the priests, you can imagine the priests all nodding their heads in agreement. Yes, we understand. Yes Malachi, we understand this is right. This is what God has commanded in his word. This is enshrined in the Ten Commandments to honour our father and mother and so on. and they would nod in agreement. It was the Sixth Commandment clearly specified, and they knew that Malachi was speaking the truth. A servant had to obey his master, otherwise he would be out of a job. And if he was a slave, he had no choice in the matter. So he uses the servant, but he also speaks first about the son. A son honors his father, a servant his master. That got their attention. So having got their attention, Malachi begins to expose their sin. Let's look at four things about their sin. Firstly, their proud boast in verse six. Where is my reverence, says God, to you priests who despise my name? Yet you say, the end of verse six, in what way have we despised your name? Well, they couldn't understand that. He said, well we're the priests of God, we're offering these sacrifices, we'll come on to the sacrifices in a moment. They boasted that God was their father and therefore they were doing what was right and therefore they expected blessing from him. But a son honours his father, that's what Malachi has said. Actually what you've done is you've devalued the character of God. You've despised him because you have not come in the right way, in the proper manner. And you have no right to expect blessings when you despise him. But they were blind to their sin. That was their proud boast. Secondly, their false actions, verse 7, you offer defiled food on my altar. But say, in what way have we defiled you? By saying, the temple of the Lord is contemptible. What they'd done is they'd treated the worship of God with contempt. They'd offered the cast-offs as offerings to God. Now there were reasons why they did that, we'll come to that in a moment or two. The people were actually bringing things which were not the prime offerings. and the priests were simply offering the offerings that the people had brought. And we'll come on to why that's a problem in a moment or two, but the priests should have insisted with the people that they kept the law of God. But they thought they could get away with it. And they're genuinely surprised that the Lord didn't accept them. See what happens in the Old Testament was here are the people, they come to the priests with their offering, and they're meant to bring offerings without blemish. What happens? Here they come, and they come and they bring their offerings, and the offering is not perfect, it's not without blemish. What does the priest do? Does he say, well, what he should do is he say, well, I'm sorry, I can't offer that. But there were consequences to that, as we shall see in a moment or two. What they were saying was, basically, they were frightened of the people. They had more concern for what the people thought than what God thought. So instead of challenging the people and saying, look, this is not right, They were actually saying, well, all right, if you brought that, we'll have to offer that. And by doing that, they're despising God's goodness. They were blind to God's goodness, their proud boasts, their false actions. Thirdly, their hypocritical behavior. Verse eight, when you offer the blind as a sacrifice, is it not evil? And when you offer the lame and sick, is it not evil? If you offer that to your governor, would he be pleased with you? Would he accept you favorably, says the Lord of hosts? The Lord is challenging them through Malachi. If you treated your earthly governor as you're treating God, would you expect to be received? Well, of course not. They would be rejected immediately. In fact, they wouldn't dare approach their governor in such a disrespectful way. What folly to think they can come to God in such a manner, because God desires the best, the best from hearts that love him and want to serve him. Now friends, that has an application, doesn't it, to us. How do we come when we come to worship? Do we come with not as much care as we should do? Now, please forgive me, I'm not accusing anybody of coming in a flippant manner, but it's all so easy, isn't it, to fall into the fact of, well, yes, we're going to church again, and yes, we go through the, and we're used to what is the right procedure, and maybe our hearts are not in it as they ought to be. And God looks for those whose hearts are right with him. He looks at our motives. He sees within our hearts. And even if our sacrifices of praise, and in the Old Testament, of course, there are sacrifices to the altar, were of the best quality, that's still of no value if their hearts are not right. As we saw the other week, Isaiah has things to say about that, doesn't he? We spoke about some of that. Now the problem here was that the attitude of the priests had affected the people. But why had the priests acted like this? Well they'd acted like this because of fear, because they were afraid that if they challenged the people, the people would react against them. Why? Well the priests, the sacrifices, part of the sacrifice was the provision for the priests. You remember how Eli's sons reacted over the sacrifices and stole more of the sacrifices than they were supposed to take. And that was one of the reasons for God's judgment upon them. Of course, their immorality and their wickedness and all kinds of other things were there as well. But one of the things, particularly in Eli's case, was because Eli, and he was a very fat man, he was taking more than he should. But part of the sacrifice was to provide for the priests. Now of course the priests were afraid of the people. If they refused the sacrifices and the people went away and they didn't bring back enough sacrifices, then the priests would starve. So they were thinking about themselves. Instead of trusting God, their livelihood depended upon the sacrifices and offerings. It was in their best interests to keep the sacrifices coming. Because if they didn't, they would starve. But the people had got away from God, and the people no longer respected God, as they should have done, nor the servants of God. And the priests were more afraid of upsetting the people than they were of upsetting God. If they condemned the sins of the people, they might lose their livelihoods. Now, friends, that's a terrible danger, isn't it? It's a danger for those of us who preach that we want to water down the message because we don't want to offend people. Now, I've lived long enough to know, and I'm sure some of you who've been preaching for many years will know this, that sometimes people can be offended by what you say, but it's God's Word. You don't set out to be deliberately offensive. You don't set out deliberately to upset people. But there's a challenge of God's Word and sometimes people don't like it. And sometimes people can hate you for it. And I've known that. I've known people who hate me because I've dared to challenge them about their sin. and it's not very pleasant for me, and it's not very easy. And it's such a temptation to say, well, let's just sort of, let's try and sort of put it. Now, we try to be as tactful as we can, and we try to be as gracious as we can, but God's word is God's word. You understand what I'm saying? You all look a bit blank. Do you understand what I'm trying to say? I hope you do. You can come back and ask me questions later if you don't. And well, it's interesting, yes. I must be careful not to give illustrations that would be out of context. I could give you illustrations from places I've preached at in the past and things that have happened and people's reactions. Not always pleasant, not always pleasant. And you can be attacked. And it's not easy. And have we got the strength of character to keep on preaching the word of God as it is laid down or are we tempted perhaps to just sort of, and I've known people do this, I've known they've said well, well maybe, oh come on you mustn't speak like that, you must, you know, you must be, you know, preach about the love of God but don't preach about hell and judgment, don't preach about punishments, don't preach, well, You have to preach about these things, not only because they're in God's word, but this is part of the claims of the gospel. It's not just simply the love of God. It's the fact that God's love is so wonderful because he hates sin. And it is because he hates sin that he's provided a way whereby our sin can be forgiven. But people don't like that. And people react against it. And so these priests here were doing what sometimes people do today. And they have to be careful. They were arguing like this. If we reject these defiled sacrifices, then we might not get anything. It's better to have polluted bread than no bread. But they should have trusted God to provide. Now, the people realized by now that something was wrong. And because their sin had not been challenged, they thought they could get away with poor worship. Now, we do see the answers later in Malachi. Don't think this is all negative. And we see something of the answers even in these verses, as we shall see in a minute or two. Because their sin had not been challenged by the priests, they thought they could get away with poor worship. In fact, they had come to assume that it really didn't matter how they worshipped God. And this is why Malachi comes. This unknown man, Malachi, as I said before, we don't actually know whether Malachi was his name or just was a title, it simply means my messenger. He is an unknown messenger, we know very little about him. We don't know his parents, we don't know his background, we don't know which tribe he came from, we know nothing about him. At least in some of the other minor prophets we know at least which tribe they came from, but we don't know in Malachi's case. He's an unknown prophet, an unknown prophet, and maybe, maybe not even the name, maybe it is just simply the Septuagint uses the title Malachi as though it is by the hand of his messenger, the word of God by the hand of his messenger. So we don't, if that is what the name Malachi or the title Malachi is, then we know nothing about this. He's a completely unknown person, but here he has given the responsibility of God to come to the priests and to the people and to challenge them. and to bring them back to God. Fourthly, their contempt, verse 12. But you profane it in that you say the table of the Lord is defiled. We read the table of the Lord again, you see. As its fruit and its fruit its food is contemptible. Their attitude was wrong. They recognised that things were not right, but they didn't do anything about it. And actually they attempted to cheat and to deceive. That's why in verse 14 God says through Malachi, but cursed be the deceiver who has in his flock a male and takes a vow but sacrifices to the Lord what is blemished. You're attempting to cheat and deceive and by your attitude you are profaning the name of God. And finally, fifthly, did I say four things? Well, there are five things. Fifthly, they're insults in verse 13. You also say, oh, what a weariness, and you sneer at it, says the Lord of hosts. And you bring the stolen, the lame, the sick, as an offering. Should I accept this from your hand? Here they were bored by the worship of Almighty God. What a testimony, what a terrible testimony. I find sometimes children say today, I don't know why, they say, I'm bored. And when our children started when they were quite young, they started saying, I'm bored. And I used to say, don't be ridiculous. Look at all the things children have today. And they say they're bored. I can remember the first, the student, when I was student, the church where I was student pastor, the church secretary, he had three children and then they had twins. So they had five children at the end. The twins were quite young. And I can remember they had a new, I can't remember whether it was a fridge or something like that, delivered to the house. And in those days, fridges weren't delivered by PC World or whatever, or John Lewis or whatever and the van arrives and they take all the plastic and the polythene off and they deliver the fridge for you and everything. In those days they came in cardboard boxes, big cardboard boxes, huge big cardboard boxes. So the fridge arrived in this big cardboard box. carefully got the cardboard box out and all the rest of it. And for weeks, weeks after that, I would go to the house and the twins would be playing with this cardboard box. And one week it was a ship, and the next week it was a house, and the next week it was something else. And, you know, they'd draw on the side and they'd have the fun they had with this cardboard box. And I thought, you know, they were quite a poor family. They didn't have a lot of things. They lived in this little tiny two-bedroomed house with five children. And I won't even begin to describe the sleeping arrangements. I mean, it was crazy. But they were such a happy family. They got really very little. And the twins for weeks played with this cardboard box. And what fun they had with it. And children today say they're bored. My grandchildren have, you know, the front room is full of toys. And most of them have come, most of them are hand-me-downs from other people, but they've got far more toys than I ever had when I was a kid, or our children had when they were small. And children say today they're bored. Why are they bored? But you see, people get bored, don't they? And people get bored with what they're used to. And the danger is, dear friends, I'm not accusing us here of this, but the danger is we can become bored with the things of God and we can get used to it. And novelty, there's a fascination about novelty and change for change's sake. Now I'm not saying that we're to be stick in the muds and we're to be Victorian and we're not, you know, I'm not saying all the good old days, that's a dreadful thing to say. Of course, the Lord does do new things and we're always progressing, hopefully, and growing in grace and developing. But there are fundamental things which are great and are good and wonderful. And for people to come along and say they're bored. Dear friends, none of you have ever said this to me, but I've met Christians who've come and they've said they're bored. They're bored with worship and they're bored with coming to church and they're bored with a preacher and they're bored with this and that. Well, I was going to say shame on you, not you, but shame on people who think like that. And here is the challenge. They're insulting God. God demands nothing less than the best. How very different was Abraham. You remember when the angels came to, the three angels came to Abraham. One of them of course was the Lord Jesus Christ, pre-incarnate appearance, a theophany. But the other two were the ordinary angels. And what does he do to them? These three men come, he doesn't recognize to start that they were angels. And he says he offers them a morsel of bread. You read it. A morsel of bread. You know, just a morsel of bread. What does he do? He goes off and kills a fatted calf. He offers them a morsel of bread but provides them a slap up meal. He cooks a calf and it's described as tender and good. He doesn't give the, and he's not under the Mosaic laws, but he doesn't give of the, just of the offcasts, he gives the best. Well, what were they to do about this? Let's have some positive. What were they to do about this? Well, God challenges them through the prophets. The priests were too, prophet, the priests were too fearful to confront the people, and the people have become arrogant towards God, But the prophet comes with the burden of the Lord to challenge them and bring them back. What does he tell them to do? Well, firstly he tells them to pray, verse 9. But now entreat the Lord's favour that he may be gracious to us. While this is being done by your hands, will he accept you favourably, says the Lord. Lord of hosts. Entreat God's favour. Literally, entreat the face of God. Come before God's face, God who sees everything. Come before God's face and plead your cause to him. Strive to be holy. What an incredible encouragement to us when we come to pray. Come before the face of God. Come to pray before the face of God. How do you feel when we come to pray on Tuesday nights and on Sunday nights and at other times? We come together and we pray and we think, how do you think of God? Now friends, I don't want you to have images of God in the right and the wrong sense, because God is a spirit spirit and those who worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth, but are we aware that we're coming before the face of God? What an incredible thing, what a privilege, what a blessing. Entreat God's favor. You deserve God's judgment, but entreat his favor. Come and ask him to bless you. Yes, you sinful people have disobeyed his word and said you're bored with his worship. Come and entreat his favor. What a blessing. Strive to be holy. Even if the people forsake God, you priests must continue to call upon him. And actually Malachi speaks ironically here. He says, virtually, he says this, do you think that by entreating God with false worship, he will look favorably upon you? Of course he won't. So come with good worship, but seek him for his favor. You deserve judgment, but God's a God of grace. And while your hands are engaged in defiled sacrifices, do you think that God will hear you? Well, seek his face, entreat him, sue for mercy. Even if you've been doing it the wrong way, come and call upon God, pray. Secondly, do something about false worship. Stop your false worship, verse 10. Who is there even among you who would shut the doors so that you would not kindle fire on my altar in vain?" Literally, God is saying to them, it's better to shut the doors of the temple than to engage in impure worship. Better, amazingly, better to let the fire go out than to kindle fire upon God's altar in vain. Now one of the purposes of the priest was to keep alight the fire. To keep alight the light and to keep alight the fire, those were their two responsibilities. Samuel had that responsibility in the tabernacle. Before the ark of God, before the light went dim, but it was not allowed to go out. It was to be kept alight, kept alight. That's taken up, of course, in the epistle to the Hebrews, isn't it? And the wonder of the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. And how he is the great high priest who keeps alight the light and the fire, But it's not now the light and the fire of sacrifice, because he's given the perfect sacrifice. And God is light, so we don't need the light, but he's the one. And Hebrews takes that up wonderfully, and takes up the Old Testament priesthood, and how that is so wonderfully and gloriously fulfilled in Christ. But if you're going to come with false worship, it's better, actually, to let the light go out and the fire go out. Better to close the church down than to mock God. And sometimes God does close churches, doesn't he? And I wonder why sometimes, having been in Cornwall and seen so many empty churches, why are there so many empty churches in our land? Places where once God's word was preached and loved and honoured, but today they're empty and shut or sold off. I can remember, please don't take this the wrong way, I can remember, being at Bible College and knowing a number of friends in the Baptist Union and in the old Congregational Union before the URC came into being. And they were good evangelical men. But both of those denominational groupings, well of course the old Congregational Union denomination as such has disappeared, hasn't it? It's become part of the URC, and I know other things have happened as a result of that, but it's gone, basically. It's only we who are independent who can technically call ourselves congregational churches, actually, because the denomination as such has got swallowed up into the United Reformed Church, which is neither united nor reformed, which is very sad. And so many men I knew who were in the Baptist Union And there are very few true evangelicals left in that group of churches now. That's sad, isn't it? That's sad. And churches closing. Better to close the church down than to mock God. And I can think of many places where God's word was once preached and loved and honoured, but now it's empty, closed, shut down, sold off. And sometimes God closes churches because judgment is upon them, because the people are disobedient to his word. What an incentive to seek to follow him. What an incentive to make sure that our worship is pure and holy and offered in the right spirit. How careful we must be. Thirdly, recognise that God will be glorified. And that's a great encouragement, isn't it? God will be glorified. Let's make sure that we're on the side of God's glory, if you understand. Verse 11, for from the rising of the sun even to its going down, my name shall be great among the Gentiles. In every place incense shall be offered to my name, and a pure offering for my name shall be great among the nations, says the Lord of hosts. God may move his candlestick from a church, but God will be glorified. Please God, he'll be glorified amongst us. Please God, we'll be true to his word. Even if God's people do not worship him as he commanded, he will still raise up a people who will acknowledge him. Now some have used this verse, I was astounded to discover this this week as I was reading through this again, that some have tried to argue that God is glorified however he is worshipped. Now, in the Tyndale Old Testament commentary, now this isn't the view of the writer of the commentary, I assure you. The writer of the commentary is using this, is showing how disastrously wrong this is. So I'm not, you know, it's quoted in the Tyndale Old Testament commentary. And although I'd read the commentary before, I'd never read this or never really taken notice of it. A man called W. Neil said this, we may be grateful to this unknown author, Malachi, for his daring and astounding recognition that worship offered in sincerity and truth under the auspices of any religion, whatever, is in effect offered to the one true God. Now that's not what Malachi is saying at all, not what God is saying here. Now I discover that the former chief rabbi endorsed this as the teaching of as true Jewish teaching. But it's not biblical teaching, and it's not what God is saying here. In fact, I would say that was blasphemy. And that's taken up by verse 14, isn't it? The end of verse 14. For I am a great king, says the Lord of hosts, and my name is to be feared among the nation. Our God is the great king. And the words in verse 11 which speak of incense being offered to my name are words that speak of sacrifice, atonement. I haven't time to go into the background of that now and the meaning of that, but I take my word for it, and I can give you the Hebrew later if you want it. I'm sure you can take my word for it. It has that sense of worship, of atonement, of sacrifice. and it's that which is taken up by the prophets in other places. It's interesting that Isaiah, in Isaiah 66, refers to this in this way and he speaks of the errors. He talks about, in Isaiah 66 verse 17, those who sanctify themselves and purify themselves to go into the garden after an idol in the midst. Eating swine's flesh and the abomination and the mouse shall be consumed together, says the Lord. You go and worship an idol. You're not worshipping the true God. That's an utter denial of the words of this man W. Neil. We're not saying that only true worship is acceptable. And then Isaiah goes on. For I know their works and their thoughts. It shall be that I will gather all nations and tongues and they shall come and see my glory, says God. I will set a sign among them. And those among them who escape, I will send to the nations, to Tarshish and Pul and Lut, who draw the bow and so on, to the coastlands afar off, who have not heard my fame nor seen my glory, and they shall declare my glory among the Gentiles. And he goes on to speak about the bringing in of the nations into the true worship of God, the wonder of the true worship of God. And of course it is so wonderfully and so profoundly taken up in the words of Psalm 72, which is why we sang our hymn, a paraphrase of Psalm 72, wonderfully speaking of the glory of God, the reign of the Lord Jesus Christ, the Messianic Psalm. Where all nations will come, in the words of the hymn, peoples and realms of every tongue dwell on his love with sweetest song. Blessings abound where'er he reigns. Let every creature rise and bring peculiar honors to our King, the wonder of his reign and his rule taken up so profoundly in Psalm 72. Blessed be the Lord God, the God of Israel, who only does wondrous things, and blessed be his glorious name forever, and let the whole earth be filled with his glory. Amen and amen. God takes no pleasure in judgment. He will judge sin, but Malachi is seeking to bring them back. bring them to God's glory. Of course later on in his book we see even more of the glory of God as we shall see. Psalm 72 is a great messianic psalm. Isaiah 66 speaks of the great glory and blessing shared by the nations. Salvation in Christ and no other. God's great blessing coming through Malachi is in order to call his erring people back to himself. Because God is the one who desires to do us good. He doesn't come to judge us, he comes to do us good. Now he will come to judge us at the last, but in the words of the old chorus that we were taught when I was a child, he did not come to judge the earth, the world, he did not come to blame, he did not only come to seek, he was to save he came. And when we call him savior, then we call him by his name because he's the one who desires to do us good. His name will be great among the Gentiles, among the nations. We have it in verse 11, we have it in verse 14. What a great King we come to. What a great Lord. What a wonderful thing it is to be able to come and call upon him, to seek his face, to repent of our sin, to cry for mercy, to come in repentance and faith. because he delights to show mercy. What a kind and gracious God we have. These people deserve to be cut off. But God says, entreat my favor, seek my face, return to me, and I will be glorified, and you will be blessed. Well, what an encouragement, friends, as we come to God in these days.