MONDAY December 20 2021 “Malachi” Malachi 3 & 4

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Good Monday morning to you my ‘Walking with Jesus’ friends, as we head into Christmas week 2021.

Have you ever found yourself waiting for news… for a long, long time? What did you do as you waited? What did you feel?

Likely there is a blank piece of paper in your Bible between the Old and New Testaments. Did you know that paper represents four centuries of time? 400 years between the time Malachi, the last prophet of the Old Testament, who wrote the messages he had received from God around 430bc, till the opening of the New Testament era in about 7bc. Mr. Malachi’s messages were delivered to the people of Israel toward the end of a remarkable time in their history as Nehemiah had led the miraculous rebuild of the wall around the city of Jerusalem in only 52 days, (Nehemiah 6:15) and then he served as Governor of the region by special authority of the Persian Emperor, establishing law and order in and around Jerusalem.

In those ensuing 400 years many remarkable things occurred in our world, including the accomplishments of Alexander the Great of the Macedonian Empire, and later the rise of the Roman Empire. For Jews in and around Jerusalem, I’m sure they felt insignificant on the world stage, especially since no priest or prophet arose in those years, claiming to have heard anything new from God. Heaven was silent, as God let His Hebrew people ponder, reflect, generation after generation, on how they had mishandled God’s Covenant relationship offered to them from the days of Moses, through the conquest of the Promised Land and the years of the Judges. God let them reflect on the damage done when they rejected His leadership plan for a theocracy, claiming their desire to have a king and be like all the other nations! (1 Samuel 8)

God gave them time to think about the lineage of kings and the reigns of Saul, David and Solomon over the united Kingdom of Israel, followed by the painful centuries of the divided Kingdom, and eventual collapse of the nation of Israel as a free people. As Malachi wrote the final chapter of the Old Testament, the Hebrew people had already been living almost 200 years under foreign domination and they would not see the re-establishment of the free nation of Israel for more than 2000 years… until the United Nations restored some of that Covenant land to the Jewish diaspora and Israel was finally established again in 1948!! Can you grasp the implications of all that, my friends? Is God doing it again, in our time, giving you and me, and nations all around our world, time to reflect during these years of the global COVID pandemic?

Malachi’s final words from God, which I’m sure resonated over and over in the hearts of Jews for the next several centuries, were these: “See, 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.” (Malachi 3:1) Oh my such wonderful news! Can you imagine my friends how excited the people must have gotten when Malachi spoke these words?

But before they could rush to prepare for the arrival of this messenger, Malachi continued: “But who can endure the day of his coming?… I will come near to you for judgement!… And you will again see the distinction between the righteous and the wicked, between those who serve God and those who do not.” Even though it had been about 1000 years, the Hebrews of Malachi’s day knew very well the stories of Moses and the plagues which freed their ancestors, the Hebrew slaves. Grandparents and parents took very seriously the privilege and responsibility of telling and retelling the great stories of their heritage as God’s Covenant people. They remembered how God protected the Hebrews in Goshen while the plagues wreaked havoc with the rest of Egypt, so it wasn’t difficult for them to understand God’s message about God making a distinction between the wicked and those He deemed righteous! Then as now, people were happy to hear God hadn’t forgotten them and was ready to bless them, even though they knew full well that many people were living as though God didn’t even exist!

And then came Malachi’s final message to the people from 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; or else I will come and strike the land with a curse.” (Malachi 4:5,6) And then Malachi the prophet put down his stylus. No more writing for he heard no more messages from God. Nor did anyone in the next generation or the one after that. In fact God was silent for 400 years leaving generation after generation to ponder the meaning of Malachi’s messages and wondering if fulfilment might come in their generation. Of course the people knew God was not suggesting reincarnation for the esteemed prophet Elijah who had been dead several hundred years. But what would someone be like who would speak and act like Elijah, and maybe even dressed in unusual ways like Elijah had?

Now what if the people of your country have been waiting for the appearance of an unusual person predicted by ancient writers in your society around the year 1600?? By now would you have given up on those predictions? While the first page of our New Testament is Matthew chapter one, the 400 year silence was broken by an event recorded in Luke 1. You’ll notice Dr. Luke assures us that he has done extensive research to provide his readers accurate information. The Herod mentioned in vs. 5 is not of the royal line of King David, but is a puppet king placed there by the Roman Caesar. The temple was the same one Malachi had visited many times, but refurbished over the ensuing years.

The priesthood, established by Aaron and Moses, had continued generation after generation thus both Zechariah and Elizabeth could trace their family lineage all the way back to Aaron! But in their old age they lived with great disappointment, because they had no heirs to continue the priestly line in their family. And then suddenly, unsuspecting old Zechariah, having the greatest privilege of his life, lighting the incense and praying, in the Holy Place of the Temple, had an encounter! Not with another person, but with an angel! And not just any angel, but Gabriel, the angel who stands in the very presence of God!!

Tomorrow we’ll look closely at what happened in that Temple encounter between the angel Gabriel and the old priest Mr. Zechariah. For today, may I leave you pondering what condition of their soul was required for both Zechariah and Elizabeth to be as Luke describes them, even though they were living daily with deep disappointment that God had not blessed them with children? The harsh reality was therefore, the 1000 year old priestly line of their family would die with them! Luke describes them this way: “Both of them were upright in the sight of God, observing all the LORD’s commandments and regulations blamelessly. But they had no children because Elizabeth was barren and they were both well along in years.” (Luke 1:6,7) Let’s ask the Holy Spirit to help us understand how to live ‘upright in the sight of God and blamelessly’ when surrounded by global dysfunction at all levels of society and the personal pain or regret that we all live with? Here’s a song to help us.my friends, in this reflection today…

Today’s Scripture is Malachi 3 and 4.

Choose below to read or listen.

Malachi 3

Malachi 4

Bible images provided with attribution to www.LumoProject.com.

Have a comment or question about today’s chapter? I’m ready to hear from you, contact me here.

Pastor Doug Anderson 262.441.8785
“Let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, with our eyes fixed on Jesus…” (Heb. 12:1,2)

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