Malachi 01: Refined for God's Glory

0:00Hey, everyone, and welcome to the Bible Breakdown podcast. In this podcast, we will be breaking down the Bible one chapter a day. Whether you are a new believer or have been following Christ for a while, we believe that you will learn something new and fresh every single day. So thank you for joining us and let's get into breaking down the Bible together. Well, everybody, welcome back to the Bible Breakdown podcast with your host Pastor Brandon today, Malachi, chapter one, and today's title is Refined for God's Glory. Refined for God's Glory. We're going to talk about that. And as always in chapter one, we're going to kind of get into some of the history and some of the things. But before we do that, as always, make sure you take just a moment, like, share and subscribe to the YouTube channel and the podcast. Make sure you leave us a five-star review on the podcast that really does help and make sure that you are going to the Bible Breakdown discussion on Facebook. It's an amazing group of people doing a wonderful job. And as always, the more we dig, the more we find.

1:02Well, we've really kind of done something special around here. And that is that we have gotten to the final book of the Old Testament. And it is amazing. And I look forward to as we get to the end of this book in a few days, we're going to talk about the fact that just because the Old Testament ended right here, it doesn't mean that's all that happened before Jesus. And not like, you know, in our Bibles, we turn from one page to the next and you got through Testament. But in between time, there's a lot that goes on. And we're going to get to that at some point in this. But the overall message of Malachi, there's a lot you could take from it. But one of the main ones is this idea that we are refined for God's glory. So we're going to dig into what that means a little bit. And so let's just kind of jump into what we've got here and let's just see where we go from here. And first of all, who wrote it? My name is Malachi. And I joke because I say sometimes the Italian prophet Malachi. So the backstory behind that is I do somebody who, one time they were reading this and they

2:03said they called it Malachi. And when I heard that, it sounded like an Italian guy. And so that's where it kind of came from is this Italian prophet named Malachi. But it is Malachi. And his name actually means my messenger. So you've ever heard that before. That's what his name actually means. And that's important because he was the final messenger before what we call the 400 years of silence. Now, where did he write this from? Most likely he was in Jerusalem at the time when he wrote this. And he is writing to what we call the post-exilic Jewish community. So if you remember, after Israel was destroyed by Assyria, Judah was destroyed by Babylon and God had told them when they were destroyed, it was going to be 70 years of exile. And that's what happened. And after 70 years of exile, what happened was the Babylonians were overtaken by the Persians and then under King Cyrus and King Darius, they were allowed to start returning to their

3:04homeland. And these people, as they've returned to their homeland, they're trying to rebuild. Like you've got farms and crops and stuff that hasn't been intended for 70 years. Let me think about that. A lot of the people who returned, they weren't born there. They were born elsewhere. And they're returning to their homeland and the city has been destroyed. They're having to rebuild Jerusalem, rebuild the walls, trying to rebuild the temple and just trying to survive. And so the time frame around this is about 430 BC, widely known as the final book written in the Old Testament in the timeline as well. And the idea is really trying to encourage and challenge this community to really find their faith and their walk with God. Let me give you some background. The big idea is to return to God with your whole heart and be sincere. God is ready to pour out his goodness and that he is going to continue to work in their life and to help them if they will continue to kind of stay on the potter's will.

4:04I say it like that and continue to let him refine them. Malachi closes the Old Testament, calling God's people to renew faithfulness and preparing them for the coming Messiah. Now why is Malachi important? He warns us to guard against spiritual apathy. The text seems to indicate that they really didn't know a lot of ways that they were not really honoring God. They didn't realize that this was happening. It's almost like it reminds me of, I remember at one time a guy told me, he owned a small business, he owned a butcher shop and there was a family in the community that they were really poor and so he would only charge them as a kindness, half price for the meat and he did it as a kindness and every time they knew about it so they would just say thank you so much. Thank you so much. Well, he had heard that their situation had gotten better and they had increased their wages and all this kind of stuff and so he had told them, hey, listen, if you don't mind, return the favor, pay full price and they said they would but they kept paying half price,

5:10and then finally when he had to kind of just really have a firm conversation, they were like, oh, we didn't even know, we didn't hear you say that that time and so they were like, okay, we'll get better, it's almost kind of like that in the book of Malachi, it's like they haven't been doing what God has wanted them to do and in the text it seems to indicate they had no idea they were doing it wrong and so God is kind of challenging them to get it right, you know, to obey God and all things, other one is to talk about the idea of corruption, the text speaks against corrupt priests and empty worship and then also about prophecies, there's a direct prophecy here about John the Baptist because it says that there will be someone who will come who will come in the spirit and the power of Elijah, a little bit more background that Persia is still the world power and what is going to happen is eventually Persia will be taken over by the Greeks which is eventually taken over by Rome which is eventually where we find the time of Jesus, Israel at this time is small and discouraged and like I said before

6:13there's a 400 years of quote unquote silence that would follow before the boom of the New Testament and we'll get to that when we get to chapter four. A couple more things interesting facts the final book of the Old Testament, it actually warns about the importance of ties and offerings it uses questions and answers to make the point and it is actually the most quoted prophet by the gospel writers and so it's very interesting and that is one of the things we're going to see as we get into the book of Malachi is it's almost as though God is having a conversation and he's saying you have asked this so I am saying this and so the way he does it you know others we've talked about how they will use post-pocalyptic or apocalyptic literature so you symbols and imagery and all this kind of stuff you've got others that do it in different ways this one is almost a Q and A kind of time as we get into it so if you're ready it's jumping to chapter one of Malachi and remember the overall idea is God is trying to refine his people

7:16try to help them to get better so they can experience all of his goodness here we go Malachi chapter one verse one says this this is the message that the Lord gave to Israel through the prophet Malachi I have always loved you says the Lord but you retort really how have you loved us see the Q and A already going on here and the Lord replies this is how I have showed my love for you I have loved your ancestor Jacob but I have rejected his brother Esau and devastated his hill country I turned Esau's inheritance into a desert for jackals Esau's descendants and Edom may say have we been shattered we have been shattered but we will rebuild the ruins but the Lord of heaven's armies replies they may try to rebuild but I will demolish them again the country will be known as the land of wickedness and their people will be called the people with whom the Lord is forever angry when you see the destruction for yourselves you will say truly the Lord's greatness

8:20reaches far beyond Israel's borders the Lord of heaven's army says to the priest a son honors his father and a servant respects his master if I am your father and master where is the honor in the respect that I deserve you have shown contempt for my name but you ask how have we ever shown contempt for your name you have shown contempt by offering defile sacrifices on my altar then you ask how have we defile the sacrifices you defile them by saying the altar of the Lord deserves no respect when you give blind animals as sacrifices isn't that wrong and isn't it wrong to offer animals that are crippled and diseased try giving gifts like that to your governor and see how pleased he is says the Lord of heaven's armies go ahead beg God to be merciful to you but when you bring that kind of offering why should he show you any favor at all ask the Lord of heaven's

9:22armies how I wish one of you would shut the temple doors so that these worthless sacrifices could not be offered I am not pleased with you says the Lord of heaven's armies and I will not accept your offerings but my name is honored by people of other nations from morning till night all around the world they offer sweet incense and pure offerings in honor of my name for my name is great among the nations says the Lord of heaven's armies but you dishonor my name with your actions by bringing contemptible food you are saying it's all right to defile the Lord's table but you say it's too hard to serve the Lord and you turn up your noses at my commands says the Lord of heaven's armies think of it animals that are stolen and crippled and sick are being presented as offerings should I accept from from you such offerings as these says the Lord curse is the cheat who promises to give a fine ram from his flock but then sacrifices a defective one to the

10:25for I am a great king says the Lord of heaven's armies and my name is feared among the nations wow so this is what's happening God has brought them back from captivity he has given them back their own land and he has said I am making a covenant with you you honor me and I'm going to bless the socks off of you I am going to show the world how good I am but you got to do it my way and they go yes let's do it but then instead of giving God what he asks for he gives them or they give him what's left over and so God says I want you to bring before me a young young sheep without spot without blemish yes sir and then they bring him when they stole or when this crippled or one that's just no good to them they they don't give God what is their best they give God what is left and then they wonder why God is not blessing them and God is saying we got to work on this we get we got to come we got to fix this and the thing is is that in every other environment

11:29we understand this but for some reason it seems unfair when God does this let me give you a couple of examples when I was a teenager young teenager I played basketball my junior high team and when we would go and we would we would tell our coach hey coach we're going to give the best effort we possibly can and we I had one of those coaches where you know he wanted to win but how you won mattered you know if we just won because we were the better team and so we just kind of you know just halfway played you know whatever then then he would get mad at us and if we lost what we gave our best effort he'd be okay with it for the most part right everybody wants to win but right it was the effort that mattered and I cannot tell you how many times we would get so angry with him but we got it when we would win but we didn't put forward the effort and where he would go I want your best effort guys your best effort and he said also for your opponents you deserve to give them your best effort and so we would get in trouble but we understood we understood that if we're going to play the game we must do it the best of our ability it's the same thing when it

12:30comes to grades at school it has the same thing to do it's going to work I remember as once again as a teenager I would get in trouble if I would go work at McDonald's right McDonald's McDonald's you know I'm saying Big Mac fry McDonald's I would get in trouble if I didn't show up to work with a uniform not wrinkled and tucked in and you know what I got it I didn't want to but I got it because they had a standard of excellence and you got to do this and in those environments we understand that we understand we understand that we walk into a marriage relationship we're not supposed to cheat on our spouse like that's like 101 right because there is a standard that I'm committing to you you're committing to me however when God says I want you to do x y and z we go well that's unfair how is it unfair I give you all of this I ask you to give me this that that's the standard well I don't like that what that doesn't really matter if you like that you know it's the idea of this is God's standard and here's the reason why God has given us everything and what

13:36he wants us to do is to trust him with our everything that's the amazing thing is that we're going to find out in chapter 3 he says I want you to test me in this see that if you don't put me first if I won't open up the windows of heaven and pour out a blessing you can't contain because what the backstory of this is is during this time the nation of Israel is going through a horrible famine horrible time where things aren't working out for them and they're they're almost kind of saying God we would love to put you first but we got to give you the crippled stuff because we got to keep the good stuff for ourselves because we're going through a difficult time and God is saying you're getting a backwards you put me first and watch what I will do and this is part of this is this refining aspect of saying you got to make sure that you don't just you don't just love me with your intentions you got to love me with your actions like really put me first and what happens and here's the challenge for all of us I think a lot of people love God in as an idea but they don't love God when it matters most they don't trust God we put it that way they don't trust God when

14:40it matters most they trust God when everything's going well it's easy to trust God when he's going well but can you trust God when things are going bad let me say it like this when you are making more money than you ever dreamed and you get an amazing bonus then it's okay the tithe and give to God praise Lord because you know you got plenty you're not going to miss it right but what are you doing you lose your job what do you do when money is tight do you still honor God that's when you can tell if this is just a game or this for real and that's what God threw Malachi through inspiring him is saying is he saying this when it counts it's time to be refined and to move forward because man that's where the true joy is because it's when you get to those impossible moments and you're still faithful to God that's when you see the most amazing miracles and that's what Malachi is going to tell the people if you can just trust the Lord he's got some amazing things he wants to show you and that's our challenge for this book let's pray together right now God thank you so much for

15:42today thank you God that you love us enough that you want to you want to shape us and mold us and challenges because you want to do more in our life but we've got to trust you with all of our life I pray God that we'll see you and see what you're doing and trust you all the more in Jesus name we pray amen and well God's word says in Malachi 3 verse 3 the Lord will sit as a refiner and he will have men who will bring offerings in righteousness God wants us to be righteous and all we do so that we can see him and all we do I love you I see you tomorrow from Malachi chapter 2 you