Malachi Chapter Three, Useless Worship

 

The first allegation Israel makes against the Lord is quite extreme. “It is useless to serve God.” We are familiar with the saying, “actions speak louder than words.” Israel attested to their feelings of religious impotency by sacrificing what was blemished, marrying pagan women, and abandoning their legitimate marriage partners. Furthermore the priests corrupted Levi’s covenant and perverted the Torah, leading the nation that they were shepherds of astray. In much smaller terms, if you are working someplace and feel like you aren’t getting what you deserve resentment sets in. At first it manifests toward your employer then co-workers and customers. The job is handled spitefully because reality did not meet your expectations. Irresponsibility settles in and colors your work ethic, attitude, and overall demeanor. But instead of self-reflection to determine what might have been misinterpreted or quitting gracefully to find different employment you take out your spite on everyone and everything around you. In modern lingo, you become toxic. Israel’s toxicity had reached critical mass with this enormously profane accusation.

The Hebrew word translated “useless” (vain, KJV) is “shav.” Its definition is, “deception, malice, falsehood.” It stems from an unused root, “sho-ah,” meaning, “destruction, desolation, tempest, or to rush over.” When the Jews asked why they have failed to profit from keeping God’s ordinance, it reveals the context of “useless.” Following God’s ordinance is deceptive, because it profited them nothing. Now we are getting a clearer picture of the pitiful state of worship and sacrifice that Malachi focused on in chapter one. They walked as mourners, or those grieving, before the Lord of hosts, they say. But what did it profit them? Jesus told us, “Moreover, when you fast, do not be like the hypocrites, with a sad countenance. For they disfigure their faces that they may appear to men to be fasting. Assuredly, I say to you, they have their reward,” Matthew 6:16. Zechariah likewise chided the Jews for their blatant hypocrisy, telling them, “When you fasted and mourned in the fifth and seventh months during those seventy years, did you really fast for Me—for Me? When you eat and when you drink, do you not eat and drink for yourselves?” Zechariah 7:5, 6.

 

Backsliding occurs in stages. No one tends to apostatize in a day. The germ grows within. Little by little doubt, regret, resentment, confusion and carnality wrestle with revealed truth. As the battle is lost, internal thoughts once shut up become louder until they influence action. Action becomes bolder and encourages rebellion. Rebellion becomes habit until truth is silenced, and we have replaced it with whatever idol provides a viable substitute. Serving God, then, proves useless, fruitless, or even deceptive in its claims verses its returns. Temple service wrought them no special favors. But this did not prompt introspection. Nonetheless like an employee refusing to do their job well and called out on it, they in turn deflect blame to anyone around them to insulate their guilt and inadequacy.

 

Then they looked outside the temple, to the people who did not sacrifice. They lived as long and their homes were full of life and goods. The “proud,” were blessed. Seemingly emancipated from God’s jurisdiction, they live long lives, commit sin freely and casually, and never answer for it. Then, asks the worshiper, what am I wasting my time serving God for? “For I was envious of the boastful, when I saw the prosperity of the wicked…behold, these are the ungodly, who are always at ease; they increase in riches,” Psalm 73:3, 12. Verse 13 accurately reflects the mentality of the resident Jewry in Malachi’s time as we read, “Surely I have cleansed my heart in vain, and washed my hands in innocence.” However, man’s perspective about sinful lifestyles is quite out of joint. We only see the surface, and we see it in glimpses when we are looking at the sinner in question who appears so blessed. The Psalmist took his grief to the Lord, and we learn together what the answer to this enigma was. “Surely You set them in slippery places; You cast them down to destruction…For indeed those who are far from You shall perish; You have destroyed all those who desert You for harlotry,” Psalm 73:18, 27. We know then that the Psalmist is not looking with envy on the godless Gentile nations of his time. The Gentiles were not part of the commonwealth of Israel; therefore they could not play the harlot, having not known God. The sinners and idolaters of Israel would suffer destruction from the Almighty for transgressing the covenant. God’s patience is a double-edged sword. He may not take away the wicked the way we want Him to, because God is merciful. But the unrepentant man heaps on himself the fire of his manifold sins if he dies in them, and all of the pleasures he sought out, knowing that he was in the wrong, shall be redressed. The Jews shouldn’t envy the wicked because here, in this sin-wasted world, they have the nearest thing to Heaven they will ever achieve. Their Heaven is temporal and highly imperfect, being mingled with sorrow and pain, lacking proper fellowship with their Creator and fellow man. Our Heaven, though deferred will involve the blessedness only the imagination of God can conjure, and it is to this end that we, by patience, possess our souls.