Malachi Chapter Two, Perverting What Is Right

 

A God wearied by sinful man’s propensity for perverting what is right, He voices a complaint how Judah tired Him with their words. Words certainly have power. God spoke, and the ordered universe sprang into being. When people speak we can certainly alter people in any number of ways. Solomon writes, “The words of a man’s mouth are deep waters,” Proverbs 18:4. Being praised, especially by loved ones, lifts the spirits. Being scolded can engender sorrow, shame or even anger. Words are like boxes filled with meaning, arranged by language to convey a concrete idea to another. But what are we presenting, exactly? The Jews wondered the self-same thing? “In what way have we wearied You?”

Here we see something of a teacher growing tired of a hopeless student, or perhaps a classroom filled with such people. Parents, we are teachers, too. We are the first, and hopefully the most impactful teachers our children will ever have, and we are the most scrutinized. Familiarity breeds contempt. A teacher speaking truth or a parent offering wisdom conveys only words until respect, admiration, or love become part of the equation. Imparting truth to someone lost in the throes of indifference is a hopeless task. I know. When I was a high school student, if I disliked a subject nothing the teacher could do convinced me to listen. Oh, I would hear, but it didn’t turn into listening. Likewise, imagine coming to this site and reading these posts without any reverence for the Bible or love for the God that penned it. Would you listen? Or would you scoff and quickly go someplace else? Here is the crux of God’s weariness: centuries of disobedient, willful rebellion and wantonness.

 

“From the thirteenth year of Josiah the son of Amon, king of Judah, even to this day, this is the twenty-third year in which the word of the Lord has come to me (Jeremiah); and I have spoke to you, rising early and speaking, but you have not listened. And the Lord has sent to you all His servants the prophets, rising early and sending them, but you have not listened nor inclined your ear to hear,” Jeremiah 25:3, 4.

 

The first prophet recorded to have come to correct Israel as a national entity is Deborah who along with Barak, delivered Israel from Jabin and Sisera. Israel, “again did evil in the sight of the Lord,” because, “they chose new gods,” Judges 4:1, 5:8. The second such prophet can be found in Judges chapter 6. His message is eerily consistent with Jeremiah, Malachi, and every other messenger in the eight centuries between Deborah and Malachi, summarizing their offense with the simple indictment: “you have not obeyed My voice,” Judges 6:10.

 

The Jews had begun to take the Lord’s longsuffering for granted and mistook it for His tacit acceptance of their evil deeds. Instead of seeing God’s patience in bearing with them because He desires that all men be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth they corrupted their ways more and more to fill up the measure of their cumulative guilt, Matthew 23:32. God withheld punishment and sent his prophets, knowing that Israel, for the most part, would be unwilling to listen.

 

Isaiah wrote of those who desecrate God’s righteous order, perverting justice and truth, “Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil; who put darkness for light and light for darkness,” Isaiah 5:20. God testifies of His own people, “this is a rebellious people, lying children, children who will not hear the law of the Lord; who say to seers (the former term for a prophet, see 1 Samuel 9:9), “Do not see,” and to the prophets, “Do not prophesy to us right things; speak to us smooth things, prophesy deceits,” Isaiah 30:9, 10, see also Jeremiah 5:31, Micah 2:11.

 

This reverse order, which Isaiah observes and soundly condemns, has gone from principle to practice in Malachi’s time. It is not enough that practitioners renounced God’s word and replaced it with their own, they insist on silencing dissenting voices. More than that, they mock dissenters by rhetorically inquiring, “Where is the God of justice?” If God genuinely cares for what is right and will redress moral sin, then why hasn’t He done so? The dissenters then, are slandered for misrepresenting God as austere, unloving, et al for daring to uphold His righteousness, His holy character amidst a generation that rejects this innately unique quality of the divine. Instead, we substitute our own righteousness, mutable, transient and entirely prone to fit the mold of the generation that dons it. Yesterday it was the emancipation of the race from God’s yoke to pursue the venerated idealism of Darwinian Evolution. Stalinist Russia, Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, and the atrocity of eugenics and the Holocaust was the fruit then reaped. Today it is abortion (the daughter of eugenics), same sex marriage, sexual license, gender misappropriation confusing our biological, God-given function, and the proliferation of alcohol and drug use. Sadly, much of this is promoted by today’s church. It is love divorced from truth. It is peace with the world without the sacrifice of the cross. It mocks the God of justice, and it besmirches Christians who dare to speak against the manifold atrocities being perpetrated in the name of tolerance and love.