Malachi Chapter One, Honor And Reverence

 

Malachi 1:6 “A son honors his father, and a servant his master. If then I am the Father, where is My honor? And if I am a Master, where is My reverence? Says the LORD of hosts to you priests who despise My name. Yet you say, ‘In what way have we despised Your name?’ [7] You offer defiled food on My altar, but say, ‘In what way have we defiled You?’ By saying, ‘The table of the LORD is contemptible.’

 

Malachi elicits two analogies. There is the son that honors his father, and the servant who honors his master. How then does a son honor his father? By obediently submitting to his father’s teaching and wisdom. Solomon writes to his own son Rehoboam, “My son, hear the instruction of your father, and do not forsake the law of your mother; for they will be a graceful ornament on your head, and chains about your neck,” Proverbs 1:8. A son honors his parents, as the Law commands (Exodus 20:12), by adorning their counsel as if he is wearing jewelry. In laymen’s terms, our conduct should reflect parental teaching to vindicate their wisdom. Later in the prophet’s message he speaks in much the same language Solomon employed, writing, “They shall be Mine,” says the LORD of hosts, “On the day that I make them My jewels. And I will spare them as a man spares his own son who serves him,” Malachi 3:17. Only the ornamentation has been turned about. God will wear His faithful like jewels adorning His crown when His children, through faith, obey Him. But before honor there comes service. The son who casts away his father’s teaching shames his family name. Instead of wearing the family jewels we have pawned them because honoring our fathers threatens independence and self-expression. Such a son may find himself disowned, as Malachi 3:18 goes on to explain.

The servant honors his master by dealing truly with his master’s business. A servant in our modern times may be likened more to an employee in a business. I am a restaurant manager, so I understand that while I control the daily operations of my business, including the people that work immediately for me, I am entirely subject to the owner of the company I am employed by. I am not a free agent; there are rules and policies I must abide by if I am to not only remain employed, but to honor my employer and demonstrate that the trust he placed in me wasn’t misguided. If this is how daily human business goes, then imagine the servant/master setting of Israel’s responsibility toward Yahweh. It was to Moses that God first revealed his covenant making name, since He had also chosen Moses to be His ambassador to Pharaoh and Israel, Exodus 3:13-15. It was under Moses that the people entered into covenant with Yahweh, Exodus 19:5-8. God declared the Jews to be a kingdom of priests, serving the Lord. He indeed was their Master, and they His servants. Under contract, a servant no longer has the freedom to exercise his individual will insofar as the strict instructions of his job would prevent. While personal liberty may exist in some smaller fashion, the duty of one’s job is given explicitly by one’s employer, and a grievous infraction is considered grounds for termination.

 

This is just what we find in these verses. If God is Israel’s Father, where is the honor due to Him, demonstrated by filial piety? Exodus 4:22, 23. If He is in fact Israel’s Master, where is His reverence, or worship? Worship is the spirit in which the individual performs an action. In this instance God complains that the Hebrews offer defiled food on His altar when they come to worship at the temple. If the offering is meant to be an act of worship, where is the spirit that seasons this offering with genuine love for God? The situation it would seem did not become better from Nehemiah’s day to Christ’s. Foreign traders doing business on the Sabbath created serious contention between them and Nehemiah, prompting the latter to threaten them with bodily harm lest they cease and desist, Nehemiah 13:19-21. By the time of Jesus’ triumphal entry the matter had not gotten better. We read: “Then Jesus went into the temple and began to drive out those who bought and sold in the temple, and overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold doves,” Mark 11:15. The temple was being profaned because it had become an extension of the market place. Worse than that, there were money-changers. Basically, a branch bank had moved into the temple so worshipers could break change to buy offerings if they didn’t have correct coin. Worse still were the sellers of doves. Leviticus is rife with passages of the various offerings that turtledoves were used for by the priests, beginning with the burnt offering, Leviticus 1:14. This offering, a free-will offering (typifying our God-given free will to respond to God’s drawing), is a volitional atonement (or covering) offering. In Jesus’ day the temple market now sold them, and the money-changers (i.e. the local bank) could help one out if they needed to break change.

 

God knows the thoughts and intents of the heart, Psalm 139:2-4. Malachi’s response on behalf of the people isn’t simply rhetoric; it is God already anticipating the self-justifying questions His children will press Him with. In verse 2 Jacob wonders in what way God has loved them, as if His love hasn’t been manifest for centuries. In verse 7 they inquire how they have managed to defile God. Since His altar is symbolic of His accepting hand, one might say they certainly have defiled Him by giving to Him less than He commanded and far less than He deserves. Since the Law was recovered and re-read in Ezra and Nehemiah’s day, the Jews are without excuse as to what constitutes acceptable offerings in God’s house. Perhaps it was that the systematic, repetitive nature of the offerings dulled Israel to the spiritual reality they symbolized. The offerings represented a victim whose vicarious death would satisfy God’s judgment on the sinner’s behalf. To bring God the best animal and the finest of the land was a demonstration of one’s faith in His word and His ability and willingness to redeem. Like prayers that become mechanical mantras void of personality or point, sacrifice became by rote instead of from the heart. Watching that animal die after delivering their life to the priests should have provoked reflection. It was for the penitent’s sin that the animal in question perished, being immolated in flame and consumed by the priests. Both actions symbolized God’s separation of the sin from the sinner, and His acceptance of the offering given by faith with what the priests consumed. Granted, these offerings were symbolic foreshadows of the redemption to be accomplished in Christ. Repetitive offerings of animals, or of prayer, et al, cannot make those who approach perfect, Hebrews 10:1-4. Their value lay in the rudimentary instruction that shed blood will atone for sin; and that only something genuinely innocent or “unblemished” can be offered as a substitute for the condemned. Spiritual laziness blinded Israel to the relevance and importance of the offerings, and they relegated “blemished” animals to the Lord, an act they would not perform with their governor, Malachi 1:8.