The View From 1776

Advent, defined as coming or arrival, celebrates the month before the birth of Jesus Christ.  It is a time to remark the oft noted contrast between the modern-day celebration of Christmas as a commercial event and its true meaning of spiritual rebirth.

At Long Ridge Congregational Church (in North Stamford, Connecticut) the Reverend Jason Pankau preached this Sunday on Malachi, the last book of the Old Testament, which has special meaning both for our Jewish spiritual forebears and for Christians.

As Rev. Pankau noted, Malachi and the New Testament are bookends for a four-hundred period, at one end the last prophetic warning (approximately 433 BC) to the Jews to remain faithful to God, at the other, the ministry of Jesus Christ.

Approximately one hundred years before Malachi’s prophetic oracle, Persian King Cyrus the Great had ended the Babylonian captivity of the Jews, permitting them to return to Jerusalem. In that hundred years the prophets Ezra, Haggai, Zechariah, Nehemiah, and Malachi took the lead in rebuilding a much shrunken political and religious state of Judea, now little larger than the old city. 

They re-established the Law of Moses via the Torah as the constitution of the new Judean state.  But, as repeatedly had happened in earlier times, the Jewish people observed many of the formalities of religion, but drifted away and hardened their hearts against God’s spiritual commands.

Malachi first takes to task the priests.

"A son honors his father, and a servant his master. If I am a father, where is the honor due me? If I am a master, where is the respect due me?” says the LORD Almighty. “It is you, O priests, who show contempt for my name." (Malachi 1:6)

"Because of you I will rebuke your descendants; I will spread on your faces the offal from your festival sacrifices, and you will be carried off with it.  And you will know that I have sent you this admonition so that my covenant with Levi may continue,” says the LORD Almighty.  “My covenant was with him, a covenant of life and peace, and I gave them to him; this called for reverence and he revered me and stood in awe of my name.  True instruction was in his mouth and nothing false was found on his lips. He walked with me in peace and uprightness, and turned many from sin.

“For the lips of a priest ought to preserve knowledge, and from his mouth men should seek instruction—because he is the messenger of the LORD Almighty.  But you have turned from the way and by your teaching have caused many to stumble; you have violated the covenant with Levi,” says the LORD Almighty.(Malachi 2:3-8)

Today we see the same backsliding among the Protestant clergy, most prominently in the Episcopal Church, but unfortunately in most of the old-line denominations.  Too many ministers have become devotees of the Social Gospel, which is rooted, not in Christianity, but in atheistic and philosophically materialistic socialism, which leads them to look to the political state, rather than God, for salvation.

Turning to the Jewish people, Malachi delivers God’s rebukes, the burden of which is their failure to worship God alone and their failure to obey His commands.

Malachi repeats God’s admonition to Joshua when the tribes of Israel were about to enter the Promised Land a thousand years earlier.  The Jews were to avoid intermarrying with other peoples who worshipped false gods.

Judah has broken faith. A detestable thing has been committed in Israel and in Jerusalem: Judah has desecrated the sanctuary the LORD loves, by marrying the daughter of a foreign god.  As for the man who does this, whoever he may be, may the LORD cut him off from the tents of Jacob —even though he brings offerings to the LORD Almighty. (Malachi 2:11-12)

Until recent decades the Jews had mostly remained faithful to that command.  But the 20th century turn of Jews to secularity and assimilation threatens to be more destructive to their history and tradition than two millennia of diaspora and persecution.

Another thing you do: You flood the LORD’s altar with tears. You weep and wail because he no longer pays attention to your offerings or accepts them with pleasure from your hands.  You ask, “Why?” It is because the LORD is acting as the witness between you and the wife of your youth, because you have broken faith with her, though she is your partner, the wife of your marriage covenant.

Has not the LORD made them one? In flesh and spirit they are his. And why one? Because he was seeking godly offspring.  So guard yourself in your spirit, and do not break faith with the wife of your youth. (Malachi 2:13-15)

So I will come near to you for judgment. I will be quick to testify against sorcerers, adulterers and perjurers, against those who defraud laborers of their wages, who oppress the widows and the fatherless, and deprive aliens of justice, but do not fear me,” says the LORD Almighty. (Malachi 3:5)

Then Malachi hits head-on the great problem of our modern world: worship of money and the earthly power it conveys.

"Will a man rob God? Yet you rob me.

"But you ask, ‘How do we rob you?’

"In tithes and offerings.  You are under a curse—the whole nation of you—because you are robbing me.  Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. Test me in this,” says the LORD Almighty, “and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that you will not have room enough for it. (Malachi 3:8-10)

As Rev. Pankau reminded us, all that we have is from God; we are merely His stewards.  What we do to glorify His name and to witness for Christ is the most important use of our money.  Tithing doesn’t necessarily mean that you will be guaranteed a stock market killing, but it does bring true happiness and peace of mind.  Ecclesiastes tells us that this is God’s gift to us, that all else is meaningless chasing after the wind.

For Jews, Malachi is the end of the Bible.  For Christians, it promises the advent of Jesus Christ.

"See, I will send my messenger, who will prepare the way before me. Then suddenly the Lord you are seeking will come to his temple; the messenger of the covenant, whom you desire, will come,” says the LORD Almighty. (Malachi 3:1)