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CONNIE: If your words today had to last for 400 years, what would you say? Join us today as we look at the message of Malachi--the last Old Testament prophet--a man whose message had to strengthen God's people for four centuries.
Giving God’s trumpet a Certain Sound for more than 70 years, this is the Voice of Prophecy.

CONNIE: Hello, I’m Connie Jeffery,

LONNIE: and I’m Lonnie Melashenko. Today we mark a milestone in our series of programs that we started almost exactly two years ago.

CONNIE: In case you haven't noticed, our programs since July, 2000, have followed a pattern. On even-numbered weeks, we focus on a particular book of the Bible, and on odd-numbered weeks, we focus on a Gospel story.

LONNIE: It's taken us two years to work our way through the 39 books of the Old Testament because of some special programs, and of course we do repeat programs on a regular basis as well. But today we graduate, I guess you could say, from the Old Testament, and our next program in this series will take a look at the book of Matthew.

CONNIE: We thought it would be a good time to kind of sum up the Old Testament. What have we learned through all this study? And our producer Ken Wade is the one who encouraged us to take this approach to our programs, so I'm going to step out and let Ken join you, Lonnie, for a quick review of what we've done.
LONNIE: Well, Ken Wade, you’re usually on the other side of the window as the producer of this broadcast. Welcome to the studio.

KEN: Right. Thank you.

LONNIE: So many books of the Bible and so little time. You’ve been working with me here as the motivating force behind this idea, Ken, of working through the whole Bible book by book. What’s been our rationale? Why did we do that?

KEN: Well, I think it’s good, don’t you, to work our way through the Bible kind of sequentially. I know you do this yourself in your personal devotions to get the whole picture. Oftentimes we know paths, like a path through the forest. We know what’s on the path through the forest, but there is so much off to the sides that we don’t stop to take a look at, and I think it’s good for us to sit down and just go through it book by book, verse by verse and get the full picture.

LONNIE: It’s been an exciting challenge. You know, it’s easy to take topics and work off the latest panic paranoia out there in the world, but to go through the bible sequentially, have you found it to be an interesting project yourself and fulfilling as we’ve done it?

KEN: Well, it certainly has. You know, I’ve read through the Bible straight through previously, but this time I wanted to take it a little bit slower as I was developing program ideas that we would then work on, and it has. It’s been a very fascinating project.

LONNIE: You know, as I’ve looked at the Scriptures, Ken, I’m sure that there are things that you learned too as we have gone along, that you didn’t know before. But one of the things that has come to surface in my own personal experience has been that the Old Testament is really all about Jesus.

KEN: Well, it’s pointing forward to Him and there’s all sorts of prophecies and particularly we taught a lesson this week in another venue about the sanctuary system and how it was pointing forward to Jesus.

LONNIE: That’s right. Many people don’t realize Jesus Himself said that the New Testament was all about the Father. He came to reveal the Father. There were questions in people’s minds about the Father but of the Old Testament He said, “Those were written about Me. I have come to make them more clear.”
KEN: Right.

LONNIE: Well, what are some of the things you’ve learned or picked up particularly that’s been exciting and refreshing?

KEN: Well, I guess probably seeing the big picture. How God’s people have learned--and I think that’s one thing you have to realize as you read through the Old Testament is that it’s a learning process. God is teaching people about Himself through the events that occurred in their lives and early in the Old Testament they have an understanding of God. Later some of the prophets developed that understanding of God even further, and it’s a growing process.

LONNIE: You know what’s interesting too, Ken, is that the Bible gets very explicit about some of the mistakes and failures and downfalls of these people so that we could learn today.
KEN: They’re written for our admonition, as Paul says.

LONNIE: Well, were there any surprises as we’ve gone along?

KEN: Well, you know, I’d never really studied deeply into some of the minor prophets before and seeing how God worked through them, the various and fascinating ways God tried to get people’s attention, for instance, and the things that He was trying to teach them along the way. Yeah, there were some surprises there.

LONNIE: What would we say would be the summary of the entire Old Testament? What’s its theme? What’s its purpose? Where do we arrive when we get to Malachi?

KEN: Well, I think you were right when you said that it’s all pointing forward to Jesus. The Old Testament is a book that points to our need of a Savior. It points to the Savior but I think there is another aspect there, God’s revelation of Himself to people in a multitude of ways and circumstances. Something that maybe matches every aspect of life as we live it today. You know, you can find in the Old Testament circumstances similar in some way that teach how God has somehow revealed Himself and God has been there present for His people in good times and in bad.

LONNIE: Would you even say that we see in the Old Testament that God is a dare-taker, a risk-taker, willing to go to the nth degree to try to reach us somehow, some way?

KEN: Absolutely, absolutely. I mean, just the whole Garden of Eden scenario shows God was willing to take a big risk on creating people to begin with and that the subject sometimes would be misunderstood.

LONNIE: Yeah, absolutely. Well, many individuals might wonder if this series of programs we’ve done on the Bible so far, particularly the Old Testament, if it will be put into some kind of a package or available to our listeners.

KEN: Well, I’d like to know that myself. You know, if folks will send us an email or letter or something like that saying that “Hey, we’d like to have that whole package,” Well, that would motivate us to put forth the effort to do that.

LONNIE: And where are we going from here as we head toward the New Testament?

KEN: Well, we’re going to be looking at the New Testament and just as we’ve done with the Old Testament, taking a careful look at each book, particularly in the context in which it was written, the circumstances that called it forth and seeing what God’s message is to us through that particular book.

LONNIE: Thanks Ken Wade, writer, producer, craftsman, wordsmith.

CONNIE: We've covered a lot of interesting stories, prophecies, and ideas as we've studied our way through the Old Testament. But of course the goal of all of it is to point us forward to the coming of Jesus. There's an old hymn that to sums up the air of expectancy and the need expressed by the Old Testament prophets. Let's listen as Cynthia Clawson sings "How Tedious and Tasteless the Hours."

CONNIE: That was Cynthia Clawson singing "How Tedious and Tasteless the Hours--kind of a melancholy song, I guess you could say.

LONNIE: True, but perhaps it does fit the mood of the world as it waited in anticipation of the coming of the Messiah--as we look at Malachi's message today, we'll be looking at a time when things didn't always go smoothly for God's people.

CONNIE: And yet it was also a time of hope as people clung to the prophets' promises of better days to come.

LONNIE: You know, it is possible to find something positive, even in tough times, and that's why we'd like to send you a little book called Growing Through Life's Toughest Times as our offer today. You can request a free copy by calling us at 1-800-872-0055, and we'll also give our mailing address later, so stay tuned.

CONNIE: But right now, it's time for you to share your message for today, Lonnie: "Malachi--Preparing for the Kingdom."

Malachi--Preparing for the Kingdom

It just wasn't working.

Things just weren't working out the way everyone thought they were supposed to. . . .

In our journey through the Bible, studying it book by book, we've come to the end of the Old Testament. To the book of Malachi--and to the questions that were bothering people in Malachi's day. It's in this prophetic book that we find God's final word to His Old Testament people.

By that I don't mean to imply that from that time on, God simply turned His back on His people and didn't speak to them through prophets and priests until the coming of John the Baptist more than 400 years later. No, in the intervening years there were powerful leaders for God, men and women who were filled with the Spirit of God who led His people in standing up for truth, and for the God of Israel.

But the book of Malachi is the last one that has been preserved and accepted into the canon of Scripture by all Christian churches. And so we ought to listen carefully to its message--a message that was to carry the people forward to the time of the coming of Christ, the Messiah. The book ends with this powerful promise about the coming of the Christ:
" 'Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the LORD. And he will turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers . . .' " (Malachi 4:5-6, NKJV).

This promise was fulfilled in the ministry of John the Baptist, who came as a forerunner of Jesus and preached about the coming kingdom of God, calling people to repentance, drawing them together, uniting families in looking forward to the ministry of Jesus.

When Jesus' disciples asked Him why Malachi had prophesied that Elijah must come before the Messiah, Jesus told them " 'Elijah has come already, and they did not know him. . . .' "

And Matthew explains that "Then the disciples understood that He spoke to them of John the Baptist" (Matthew 17:12-13, NKJV).

So, Malachi's prophecy looks forward, and carries us forward, to the New Testament. It's appropriate that it is the last book in the Old Testament. The prophet's message was designed to prepare the people to maintain their faith and their worship of God through the long centuries of waiting, just as the book of Revelation at the end of the New Testament is intended to strengthen Christians' faith through the time of waiting for Jesus' second coming.

Think of it--400 years. What was the world like 400 years ago? Why, the first permanent English settlement on the North American continent hadn't even been built yet! That would happen in Jamestown several years later.

But Malachi's prophecy would have to sustain people in their expectation of the Messiah for more than 400 years! He probably didn't realize it when he was writing out his prophecy, but for centuries, his message would be looked upon as God's final word to the Israelite people.

As so often happens with prophecies, Malachi's message came at a time of crisis--a crisis of faith--a time when many people were abandoning their faith in God.

When Malachi comes on the scene, God's people--the Jews--have been back in the Promised Land for about a century. You'll remember that in 586 BC the city of Jerusalem had been overthrown and completely destroyed by the Babylonians. About 50 years later, a group came back to Jerusalem to begin rebuilding the temple, but it wasn't until the time of Haggai and Zechariah that the people really got behind the building project and finished construction.

Haggai and Zechariah had called the people to repentance and rededication to doing the work of God in rebuilding the temple, and had promised that when people put God's service first, things would change for the better in the land.

And things had improved. But apparently not enough to satisfy the complainers. They were the ones who claimed that "It just isn't working out the way we thought it would!"

If you've ever heard the Smothers Brothers' comedy routine, you'll remember that famous line "Mom always liked you best!" Whenever things aren't going well for Tom, he can resort to that line, looking at his brother and claiming that all his problems stem from the fact that Dick always got preferential treatment when they were growing up. If only poor little Tommy had gotten more parental love, affection, and affirmation, none of this would have happened to him!

Well, when you start reading Malachi, you get the impression that some people in Israel has been making that same sort of a complaint to God. "You don't really love us--if you really loved us, you'd bless us more, and we wouldn't have any problems!"

Some were even complaining that God was taking better care of other nations than He was of them. They claimed that Edom--the descendants of Israel's brother Esau--was prospering, while Israel was suffering.

Through Malachi, the Lord responded to that complaint by taking the long view. He says: You know what? It may appear that way right now, but let me tell you what's going to happen in the future. Even though Edom may rebuild its cities and seem to be more prosperous than you, it's not going to last. In the end there will be nothing left of them, but if you'll just trust in Me, I'll continue to bless you.

But that's the big IF!

IF you'll continue to trust in me.

The people have been complaining that God doesn't seem to be pouring out the blessings they expect. In fact it's gotten so bad that people are starting to ask what's the purpose of even worshiping God. Here are their very words, recorded in Malachi 3:13-15

" '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 profit is it that we have kept His ordinance, and that we have walked as mourners before the LORD of hosts? So now we call the proud blessed, for those who do wickedness are raised up; they even tempt God and go free" ' " (NKJV).

In other words, the people are looking around them and saying "You know what? Being a good Jew doesn't really help at all. Repenting of our sins and bringing offerings to the temple doesn't pay good dividends. In fact, the proud who don't humble themselves before the Lord are getting all the blessings. Those who sin openly don't get punished, in fact they end up better off than the religious!"

Now, you might expect that the Lord would respond to these complaints with words like Jesus used in the New Testament: "Blessed are the poor . . . for theirs is the kingdom of heaven."

But that's not the tack God takes in Malachi.

In fact, you could almost say that God responds to the people's accusations by going on the attack Himself. But He's not really attacking them. Only pointing out that maybe the problem doesn't lie in His court, but in theirs.

Speaking for God, Malachi responds to the people's complaints by pointing out five specific sins that are shutting off the flow of God's blessings to them.

The people are complaining that worshiping the Lord hasn't improved their lot in life. God responds by asking just how faithful they've actually been in their worship. "You offer defiled food on My altar," He says (Malachi 1:7). He asks them how their governor would respond if they brought sick animals to him as a gift--would he bless them? Then how can they expect God to bless them when they bring the sick and blemished animals for sacrifices?

He sets up a definite cause-and-effect relationship between the people's faithfulness and the Lord's blessings. Because they don't live out their faith, responding to God wholeheartedly, with perfect offerings, He doesn't respond to them with blessing.

But that's not all. In chapter 2, the Lord takes issue with the unfaithful priests, and with the people because they have begun to freely practice divorce instead of being faithful to their marriage covenants--the implication is: If you aren't faithful to your covenants, why should God be faithful to His?

He makes it clear that if the people want to experience His richest blessings, they need to consider their lives and their devotion to Him. They need to clean up their act. And in chapter 3, the Lord promises that He Himself will do the cleaning up: "He will sit as a refiner and a purifier of silver; he will purify the sons of Levi, and purge them as gold and silver, that they may offer to the LORD an offering in righteousness" (Malachi 3:3 NKJV).

He then reminds them that they have even gone so far as to steal from Him by failing to bring faithful tithes and offerings: " 'Will a man rob God? Yet you have robbed Me! But you say, "In what way have we robbed You?" In tithes and offerings' " (Malachi 3:8, NKJV).

But He doesn't leave it at that. He challenges them to be faithful, and to see what the results are: "Bring all the tithes into the storehouse . . . and try Me now in this,' says the LORD of hosts, 'If I will not open for you the windows of heaven and pour out for you such blessing that there will not be room enough to receive it.' " (Malachi 3:10, NKJV).

Over and over again, Malachi challenges us: If you want God to be faithful with you, be faithful with Him!

The nations around Israel thought of offerings and sacrifices as a way to buy God's favor. In fact, Malachi's contemporary, the Greek philosopher Plato, included this idea in the discussions carried out in his famous work The Republic. One of his main characters argues that the wealthy will be most blessed by the gods because they can bring offerings to buy the favor of the gods.

But that's not Malachi's point. No, the sacrifices, tithes, offerings He calls for must be an expression of faith in God, not an attempt to buy His favor. "Try Me out," God says (Not buy Me off!)

Because it is our genuine faith in Him that opens the channels--the windows of heaven, as Malachi expresses it--to receive the blessings the Lord wants to pour out on us.

Faith and faithfulness--the two need to go together. And that's the message the Old Testament leaves us with. The Lord will not abandon His people. He has a plan for the future. And those who trust in Him will be a part of it.

I want to be a part of God's plan both now, and for ever, don't you? Won't you resolve with me to put your faith in God, more and more every day--and to be faithful to Him, as He is faithful to you?