Malachi Chapter Two, Covenant Corrosion

 

Many stumble because trust was placed in the title and position of the men appointed to lead God’s flock. It begins as an innocent error of judgment, but being beguiled does not make us guiltless. In my youth I once believed in what is called the Gap Theory, taught to me by Donald Barnhouse. While interesting, its implications undermine and confuse much of Scripture, especially origins, Satan’s person and angels in general. God be praised my wife and I learned from a clearer stream in regards to origins and gained a God-given confidence in Genesis and what it relates concerning our beginnings. I do not believe Mr. Barnhouse was an apostate Christian; he seemed a very devoted man, sincerely confused doctrinally about the issue of origins due to Charles Lyell’s theories pertaining to geology. A godless man infected a godly man, and that godly man carried the germ into the church. What happens then, when a godless man infiltrates God’s institution with the intention of destruction from within?

In this instance the Holy Spirit tells us that first the priest, then the people, and finally the entire covenant is corrupted. “You have corrupted the covenant of Levi.” Such shameless conduct has ruined, degraded, spoiled Levi’s covenant and roused the curse that will remove God’s hedge and blessings from the priesthood. This lamentable condition—not at all unique to post-exilic Israel—is described aptly by Hosea. “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge. Because you have rejected knowledge, I also will reject you from being priest for Me…they (the priests) eat up the sin of My people; they set their heart on their iniquity. And it shall be: like people, like priest. So I will punish them for their ways, and reward them for their deeds…because they have ceased obeying the Lord,” Hosea 4:6, 8-10.

 

The apostle Paul, writing about his kinsmen in the flesh, tells us, “For they are not all Israel who are of Israel, nor are they all children because they are the seed of Abraham,” Romans 9:6, 7. The unfaithful hide in plain sight. Paul says genetics has nothing to do with salvation. John writes that only to those who receive Him does God give the right (authority) to become His children, being received so not by our own will, but by His, John 1:12, 13. The priests misunderstood the purpose of their station. Being Jewish availed them nothing, save to garner a worse condemnation than the Gentiles who did not (then) know God. Wearing the priestly vestments served to tighten the noose, as it were. But when apostasy is rampant physical departure is unlikely. In the instance of the church, when we have departed from the way and abandoned out first love, Christ removes our lampstand, plunging such a church into spiritual darkness and ensuing bedlam, Revelation 2:4, 5. We see its equivalent in Israel. When apostasy had become so rampant that hardly a faithful soul remained they departed, first to Assyria, then to Babylon. By human choice we depart in spirit from the living God, who is the source of life and light. God, in turn, departs from us, or as King of creation, He has us removed from His presence. Israel suffered a spatial, literal removal from God’s sight for their excessively gross list of trespasses. This was history for Malachi’s priests, and honestly had been less than 200 years since the exile into Babylon. However, the second exile and more permanent was to be “cut off from his people.” Achan and his family suffered this fate in the time of Joshua. Eli and his sons likewise died, being cut off from their people.

 

In a sense it fulfills what God spoke to Adam in the Garden in the beginning. Genesis 2:17, which states, “for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die,” could also be rendered, “for in the day that you eat of it dying you shall die,” from the Hebrew. God gave Adam and Eve a simple, singular commandment. But that command came with the intimation that it could be disobeyed, and if disobeyed punishment would ensue. The twice-emphasized word of die indicates that disobedience would result in sin. Sin, of course, separates man from fellowship with God, who is life. Sinning would sunder Adam’s connection to the divine, and to life. Thus sinning (spiritually dying) physical death results. The cause is sin and spiritual death: the effect is physical death. Both separate the sinner. The latter from this world, and the former eternally from fellowship with God.