Verse-by-Verse Bible Commentary
Malachi 3:3

Clarke's Commentary

Verse Malachi 3:3. He shall sit as a refiner — Alluding to the case of a refiner of metals, sitting at his fire; increasing it when he sees necessary, and watching the process of his work.

The sons of Levi — Those who minister in their stead under the NEW covenant, for the OLD Levitical institutions shall be abolished; yet, under the preaching of our Lord, a great number of the priests became obedient to the faith, Acts 6:7; and, as to the others that did not believe, this great Refiner threw them as dross into the Roman fire, that consumed both Jerusalem and the temple.

Bridgeway Bible Commentary

Cheating God (2:17-3:18)

When the Jews saw surrounding nations prosper while they suffered hardship, they complained that God was not just. Other nations made no effort to keep God’s law, whereas Israel was his people (17). Malachi replies that if justice is what the Jews want, then justice is what they will have; but they must realize that such justice will apply to them as well as to their heathen neighbours. They have asked for the God of justice; now he will come and do his work of justice among them (3:1).

God will intervene in human affairs and bless his people as they wish, but first he will have to cleanse them of all uncleanness, rebellion and social injustice - and this will be a very painful process. Those who resist his cleansing and continue in their sin will be punished with swift destruction (2-5). (The intervention of God spoken of here was the coming of Jesus Christ. The messenger who came before him was John the Baptist; see Matthew 3:10-12; Matthew 11:10; John 3:27-28.)

If the people want to escape hardship, they should be asking for mercy, not justice; for their hardship, though a punishment, is a merciful punishment. As always, God has been extremely patient with them. If God always acted according to strict justice (as they are claiming he should) they would all have been destroyed long ago (6-7).
Because of drought, locust plagues and plant diseases, they have had poor crops, but all these disasters have been sent by God. They are his punishment upon them because they have kept for themselves what rightly belongs to him. In their selfishness they have failed to give him their tithes and offerings (8-9). They must change their ways and be honest with God. Then he will bless them with good rains and good crops. The result of their generosity will be that they become more contented and their land becomes a better place in which to live (10-12).
Many of the people continue to murmur against God. They complain that it is useless to try to live to please him, as they still suffer hardships. By contrast, those who openly defy him seem to prosper (13-15). Others, however, will not allow themselves to be influenced by such talk. They encourage one another to remain faithful to God, believing that he will never forsake them. The difference between these two classes - those who truly serve God and those who do not - will be clearly seen in the day of judgment (16-18).

Coffman's Commentaries on the Bible

"And he will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and he will purify the sons of Levi, and refine them as gold and silver; and they shall offer unto Jehovah offerings in righteousness."

The Messianic thrust of the passage continues here. The covenant with Levi is no more; but there will be a new "priesthood," namely, the totality of all Christians in Christ, and their offerings "in righteousness" shall be such as were spoken of by Peter, whose language shows that he had this very passage in mind:

"The proof of your faith, being more precious than gold… proved by fire… ye are built up a spiritual house… a holy priesthood to offer up spiritual sacrifices to God by Jesus Christ, etc. (1 Peter 1:7; 1 Peter 2:5).

The sacrifices "in righteousness" offered by the Christian include: our faith (Philippians 2:17), the love of God (Mark 12:33), our words, "the calves of our lips" (Hosea 14:2), our confession of Christ (Hebrews 13:15-16), our baptism into Christ (Romans 12:1), our praise (Hebrews 13:15), our contributions (Philippians 4:18), our songs (Colossians 3:16), our prayers (Revelation 5:8), the entire life of a Christian (2 Timothy 4:4), etc. In this dispensation, the bloody sacrifices of the Mosaic law are replaced by spiritual sacrifices. These must be distinguished from the One Great Sacrifice of the blood of Christ for all men, which is the atonement for sin.

The fact of the priesthood (Levi) being mentioned first here indicated that God's judgment would always begin with those of the greatest privilege. It is so even yet, and eternally. "For the time is come for judgment to begin at the house of God; and if it begin first at us, what shall be the end of them that obey not the gospel?" (1 Peter 4:17). Peter's conclusion here fits exactly into this prophecy. Hailey's deduction is therefore correct: "The Lord will not come simply as a judge of the heathen, but as a judge of His own as well."Homer Hailey, op. cit., p. 419.

Barnes' Notes on the Whole Bible

And He shall sit - ^o as a King and Judge on His throne, with authority, yet also to try accurately the cause of each, separating seeming virtues from real graces; hypocrites, more or less consciously, from His true servants.

He shall purify ^o the sons of Levi - These had been first the leaders in degeneracy, the corrupters of the people by their example and connivance. Actually Acts 6:7, “a great company of the priests were obedient to the faith.” Barnabas also was a Levite. Acts 4:36. But more largely, as Zion and Jerusalem are the titles for the Christian Church, and Israel who believed was the true Israel, so “the sons of” Levi are the true Levites, the Apostles and their successors in the Christian priesthood.

It was through three centuries of persecutions that the Church was purified by fire.

That they may offer - , literally “and they shall be unto thy Lord offers of a meal-offering in righteousness,” i. e., they shall be such, and that, habitually, abidingly. Again, here and in the next words, “and the meal-offering of Judah shall be pleasant unto the Lord,” it is remarkable, that the “meal-offering,” to which the holy eucharist corresponds, is alone mentioned. Of bloody offerings Malachi is silent, for they were to cease.

In righteousness - , as Zacharias prophesied, “that we might serve Him in holiness and righteousness before Him all the days of our life.”

Calvin's Commentary on the Bible

The Prophet says, that Christ would sit to purify the sons of Levi; for though they were the flower, as it were, and the purity of the Church, they had yet contracted some contagion from the corruption which prevailed. Such then was the contagion, that not only the common people became corrupt, but even the Levites themselves, who ought to have been guides to others, and who were to be in the Church as it were the pattern of holiness. God however promises that such would be the purifying which Christ would effect, and so regulated, that it would consume the whole people, and yet purify the elect, and purify them like silver, that they may be saved. He tells us afterwards that the Levites themselves would need a trial to cleanse them; for they themselves would not be without filth, because they had mixed with a perverse people, who had wholly departed from the law, and from the fear and the worship of God.

Smith's Bible Commentary

Chapter 3

Now the promise of the coming of John the Baptist as the forerunner to Jesus Christ.

Behold, I will send my messenger, and he shall prepare the way before me: and the Lord, whom ye seek, shall suddenly come to his temple, even the messenger of the covenant, whom ye delight in: behold, he shall come, saith the LORD of hosts. But who may abide the day of his coming? and who shall stand when he appears? for he is like a refiner's fire, and like the fullers' soap: And he shall sit as a refiner and purifier of silver: and he will purify the sons of Levi, and purge them as gold and silver, that they may offer unto the LORD an offering in righteousness. Then shall the offering of Judah and Jerusalem be pleasant unto the LORD, as in the days of old, and in the former years ( Malachi 3:1-4 ).

Now here we have a co-mingling of both the second... the first and the second comings of Jesus Christ. John the Baptist did come as the forerunner, proclaimed the coming of the Lord after him. "There's One coming after me mightier than I, the latchet of whose shoes I'm not worthy to unloose" ( John 1:27 ). When he saw Jesus, he said to his disciples, "Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world" ( John 1:29 ). He bore testimony of Jesus Christ.

But Jesus was rejected. He did come to the temple. He did cleanse it. He drove out the moneychangers and those that were selling the doves. But He was rejected. But He is coming again, and before He comes again, Elijah shall come, precede Him, and prepare the hearts of the people for the coming of the Lord. So part of this was fulfilled in His first coming; much of it remains to be fulfilled in His second coming.

But with Malachi and so many of the others, they did not see the two aspects of the coming of the Messiah. So as they wrote, Peter said, "They wrote of things that they really didn't understand." Earnestly desiring to look into these things and to understand them. But they really didn't, and they didn't understand, really, the seeming ambiguity and contradictions of the prophecies that they were making. For they were prophesying that He would reign as King and Lord forever upon the throne of David and establish the kingdom forever, and yet, they were saying, "and He was despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrow, acquainted with grief, cut off from the land of the living" ( Isaiah 53:3 ). "The Messiah shall be cut off, but not for Himself" ( Daniel 9:26 ), or without receiving the kingdom. So they were giving these prophesies that they could not themselves understand, because there was this seeming paradox, the differences. But yet, they wrote of them, honestly obeying the voice of the Spirit that was speaking to their hearts, though they themselves did not understand the things of which they wrote.

The Lord said,

And I will come near to you to judgment ( Malachi 3:5 );

Now this is referring, of course, to the second coming of Christ; He's coming to judge the world. The first duty, the first activity of Christ when He returns to the earth is that of judgment, gathering the nations together for judgment.

and I will be a swift witness against the sorcerers, and against the adulterers ( Malachi 3:5 ),

Now the sorcerers are those... the word in the Greek is pharmakeia, from which we get pharmacology, which is the use of drugs... those that are using the drugs for hallucinogenic purposes, against the adulterers.

against [those who are liars] false swearers [those who swear falsely], against those who are oppressing their [employers, or their] employees in his wages ( Malachi 3:5 ),

Withholding, actually. In James it says, "Go to now ye rich, weep and howl for the woes that have come upon you, for you have defrauded the laborer, you've been holding back his wages in order that you might live sumptuously." Now the Lord speaks of their being cut off. So those that are oppressing the hirelings holding back the wages,

oppressing the widow, and the fatherless, and that turn aside the stranger, and fear not me, saith the LORD of hosts. For I am the LORD, I change not; therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed ( Malachi 3:5-6 ).

God's promises to Jacob are sure, otherwise He would've consumed them; He would've consumed the people. But His promises He keeps, and He promised that to Jacob there would arise the star, the morning star. So God keeps His word, but God is here declaring that if it were not for His word, they would be consumed. "But I am the Lord, and I change not." This is what is called, from a doctrinal standpoint, the immutability of God. That is, God does not change. In the New Testament we read concerning Jesus Christ, "The same yesterday, today, and forever." He does not change. God's immutability--one of the divine attributes of God.

Even from the days of your fathers you are gone away from my ordinances, and you've not kept them. Return unto me, and I return unto you, saith the LORD of hosts. But you said, Why should we return? ( Malachi 3:7 )

So God is even now giving them the chance to turn. "Return to Me," God said, "I'll return to you." They said, "Why should we?" They were surely impudent people.

Then the question:

Will a man rob God? Yet [the Lord said] you have robbed me. But you say, Where have we robbed you? [And God said] In the tithes and in the offerings ( Malachi 3:8 ).

The word tithe means a tenth. God claims that a tenth of the increase belonged to Him. For them to withhold it from God was robbing God, and God looked upon it as actually robbing from Him. This is under the Old Testament law. God said,

Ye are cursed with a curse: for you have robbed me, even this whole nation ( Malachi 3:9 ).

Now, when Nehemiah came back the second time, the worship in the temple had been forsaken because the people were not bringing tithes and offerings into the temple. Thus, the priest had left the ministry in the temple and they'd gone out into the fields, and they were cultivating fields and they were working in order to provide for their own necessities for their own survival. Thus, the temple worship was neglected when Nehemiah returned. So he called the people together and he rebuked the people for the fact that the priest had to leave the ministry of the temple and go out into the fields to work to support themselves. Nehemiah set this thing straight. So again, the book of Nehemiah helps give you background for what Malachi is saying.

God talking about the people robbing Him, and then God commands them,

Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in my house, and prove me now herewith, saith the LORD of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour out unto you a blessing, that you'll not have room enough to receive it ( Malachi 3:10 ).

Now, it is interesting to me that, as far as I know, this is the only place in the scripture where God has actually challenged a person to prove Him. For God says, "Prove Me and see if I'll not pour out upon you a blessing so great that you won't be able to contain it."

Now, we often hear the objection, "Well, there is no mention of tithing in the New Testament. It is a part of the Old Testament law. It is not something that is applicable to the church age." This, for the most part, is true. There is only one mention of tithing as such that I can think of, and that is when Jesus was speaking about the hypocrisy of the Pharisees and how they had twisted so many things, "straining at a gnat, swallowing a camel" kind of thing. He said, "You paid tithe of your anise, your mint, and your cumin." Now these are spices; they're little spice gardens that they would grow. They would take these little anise seeds and count out, "Nine for me, one for God. Nine for me, one for God." Little tiny seeds, and they were very careful that God got His tenth part of this spice from their herb gardens. He said, "You pay tithes for these things, but," He said, "you totally overlook the more important things of fairness and honesty. You know, you're crooked in your dealings, yet you're so careful that God gets His tenth part, even of your spices." Now God said, Jesus said, "This you ought to have done," in the reference of their tithing, "You ought to do that," but He said, "You shouldn't leave the other undone."

Now, I do not, and you know that I don't, preach tithing as a requirement or as a law. You know that oftentimes I have spoken to you of the grace of God, and that God will never be a debtor to any man, and how that our blessings from God are not predicated in this covenant of grace upon our obedience to the law, our faithfulness in devotions, our faithfulness in tithes, or whatever. Where the people at one time related to God through the law, God has chosen that we should relate to Him in love.

God has chosen to bestow upon us His blessings on the basis, not of our obedience or faithfulness to the law, but upon the basis of His grace towards us. So that all of God's blessings are bestowed upon my life not because I merit them, not because I deserve them, but because God just loves me, and I just can't help that. I am so thankful for it. That God just loves me so much He wants to give to me. Now, wouldn't it be rather stupid for me to say, "Oh, God, don't do that, you know. Don't do that. You're too good, Lord!" I often say, "You're too good," but I don't say, "Stop." I appreciate the goodness of God. I thank God for His grace, and I thank God that I can relate to Him in love, not the law. I feel sorry for people who have a legal relationship with God. Oh, how I thank God for this love relationship that I have. I love Him, He loves me, and it's just a neat deal. Because He loves me more than I love Him, and He is always showing to me how much He loves me. Quite often He is showing me how much He loves me right after I have failed so miserably, just so I won't get discouraged. By His grace He just sort of says, "Hey, I know you're frame. I know you're but dust. I still love you anyhow, and I want to show it to you." God just is constantly overwhelming me with His love.

However, there is a divine law involved in giving. I would be derelict as a minister if I did not point out to you a divine spiritual law that God has enacted in this universe. The law is basically expressed in the New Testament in these words, "Give, and it shall be given unto you. Measured out, pressed down, and running over, shall men give into your bosom" ( Luke 6:38 ). Now that's a spiritual law of God. The more you give, the more you will receive. Paul the apostle expressed it by saying, "He who gives sparingly will receive sparingly, but he who gives bountifully will receive bountifully" ( 2 Corinthians 9:6 ). It's a divine spiritual law.

Now, we're quite conscious of the natural laws that govern our universe. Though we don't fully understand them, we are aware of them. And we live in accordance to them, and we take advantage of them. Now, I'm certain that none of us really understand how gravity works; we just know that it does work. We know that an apple falls down not up. Just how the principle of gravity may work, how mass attracts, we don't really know, but we know that there is an attraction by mass. So we learn to respect the law of gravity and abide by the law of gravity.

Now, we have learned through our scientific developments and technology to learn that there are other laws of aerodynamics by which we can compensate against the law of gravity. We can put airplanes into flight by the laws of aerodynamics, which we understand--the thrust of air going over and so forth, under the airlines and so forth, the lifting power and thrust. And we've learned through the laws of aerodynamics to compensate against the law of gravity. But basically, we, all of us, respect the laws of gravity. We don't just jump off a ten-story building, saying, "Well, I don't care for the law of gravity. I don't understand how it works, and I just don't believe in it." We're not that stupid that we would defy the law of gravity in such a way.

Now, there's the law of electricity, how that the positive particles repel and the negative particles attract. And we know the opposite poles, the attraction of opposite poles and so forth, but yet, to understand electricity, we really don't. But we sure learn how to use the law of electricity and make it our servant.

Now, just as there are laws of gravity, laws of electricity, laws of aerodynamics, and these basic laws of nature that we have learned to live with and to use, so there are spiritual laws in the universe that God has inaugurated that you can use for your benefit. God has established these laws. They are just as powerful in their cause and effect as is the law of gravity or any of the other laws of nature which we have learned to live with. One of the laws, the spiritual laws, involves the giving to God, and that is, "Give, and it shall be given unto you; measured out, pressed down, running over." The more you give to the Lord, the more you will receive from Him. That's just a basic spiritual law. You say, "Well, how does it work?" I don't know. All I know is that it does work. God, only in this area, challenges people to prove Him. "Just prove Me," God says, "just see if I will not pour out unto you blessings that you won't be able, you won't have room enough to contain."

Now, you want to take God's dare? God's challenge to you, try it. Prove the Lord. See if He will not pour out unto you blessings that you cannot contain. There will not be room enough to receive it. For the Lord says,

I will rebuke the devourer for your sakes, he shall not destroy the fruits of your ground; neither shall your vine cast her fruit before the time in the field, saith the LORD of hosts. And all nations shall call you blessed: for ye shall be a delightsome land, saith the LORD of hosts. And your words have been stout against me, saith the LORD. Yet ye say, What have we spoken so much against you? ( Malachi 3:11-13 )

Every time God tells them something is wrong, they challenge, "Where, why, when, how?" "You said that it was vain to serve God. It doesn't pay to serve the Lord. That's what you're saying," the Lord said, "Saying it was vain to serve God, doesn't pay to try and be good."

what profit it is that we have kept his ordinance, that we have walked mournfully before him? ( Malachi 3:14 )

"God, it doesn't pay. God does not respond to us. There's nothing, you know. The Lord hasn't done anything. Doesn't pay to serve the Lord." How many times Satan tries to throw that little trip on us. "Doesn't really pay. What profit is it that I've tried to be good? Look, they've took advantage of me. It doesn't pay to serve God."

And now we call the proud happy; yes, they that work wickedness they are ( Malachi 3:15 );

Voted into office many times. Thank God we've got some good Christians in some of the areas of government. I think that it is the duty of every Christian to really know the position of a candidate on spiritual things. I really feel that that's our obligation. That we really can't complain about bad government if we are not exercising our privilege of voting, and if we are not using diligence in determining those that we vote for. And when Dr. Peterson runs for the School Superintendent of Orange County, you should know that he is a beautiful born again brother in Jesus Christ. You should think about that when you vote. It's illegal for me to try to persuade you to vote for a particular candidate, and I wouldn't think of doing that. But don't forget the name Dr. Peterson. He happens to be the incumbent. But find out about the candidates; find out about their position. God help us, it would be glorious if we had all spiritual men serving in the cabinet of the President, serving in the legislature, the offices of legislature. Of course, then we probably wouldn't be so anxious for the Lord to come.

Then they that feared the LORD spake often one to another ( Malachi 3:16 ):

The Bible says the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. The Bible says that to fear the Lord is to hate iniquity, or is to depart from iniquity. The fear of the Lord is not a phobia type of fear that debilitates a person. The fear of the Lord isn't even a healthy cautionary type of fear that is so important for our survival. But the fear of the Lord is a reverential awe as we stand in the presence of His greatness, of His glory, of His majesty, and of His power. We think of the greatness of the God who created this vast universe. We think of the wisdom of God who created all of the life forms, and we just sort of stand in awe of that greatness and power, and wisdom. That's what the fear of the Lord is.

"They that feared the Lord spake often one to another," always talking about the Lord. Isn't it glorious to be around people who want to talk about the Lord all the time? You know, whenever you get around them, the conversation comes up, "Oh, the Lord is so good. Oh, let me tell you what the Lord's done. Let me tell you what the Lord did for me today." Just so full of the Lord, they speak often one to another about it. As they speak about the Lord,

the LORD hearkens unto them, and hears it ( Malachi 3:16 ),

The Lord eavesdrops on every conversation concerning Him. Isn't that neat? God just loves you to talk about Him. We used to sing a chorus, "Let's talk about Jesus, the King of kings is He, the great I Am, the way, truth, the life, the Lord." It's just a... what better conversational piece can you have than the Lord? Isn't it interesting how the world says, "Well, you want to open a conversation, just start talking about the weather." Sort of a, you know, "Well, the sun did come out today, didn't it? I wondered if it was going to come out. Typical May weather." You know, talk about the weather. Yeah, well, the weather is such a changeable thing, yet isn't it sad that people have nothing better to talk about than the weather?

Now, there are people who all have their favorite subjects, and they can be a total dud until you get on their subject. Then they come alive. They become animated. Now you're in their field. Oh, now they'll really expound. But you bring up the subject of the Lord and things will go quiet. What happened?

"They that feared the Lord spake often concerning Him one to another. The Lord hearkens, He hears,"

and he's keeping a book of remembrance for them who feared the LORD, and thought upon his name ( Malachi 3:16 ).

Names in the Hebrew culture were all meaningful. They didn't just choose the name out of the dictionary for their children, but they chose a name that meant something. Now, our name still means something, you can look up in a dictionary and find out what your name means. But your parents, as a general rule, weren't thinking of the meaning of the name when they named you that. But when they were in school they had a friend by that name, and they liked that friend very well. So that name has always been a good name to them. There are some names, you know, you knew some dummy in first grade who couldn't read, and his name was this, and it sort of stained you on that name. You just never did like that name because it always reminded you. So it's interesting how we don't think of names as far as significant in their meanings. Or else we would probably be naming our children different names than what we do. We're calling our children, "Beautiful Sunshine" or something, or things that mean something to us. A little kid goes to school, the teacher says, "What is your name?" "Beautiful Sunshine Smith." So it just isn't appropriate in our culture.

But in those days names were significant, and the name of the Lord is extremely significant. So much in the Psalms and in the Proverbs you find the references to the name of the Lord. "The name of the Lord is great," and so much concerning the name of the Lord, and the awe and the reverence that a person should have concerning the name of the Lord. The name of the Lord is actually a Hebrew active verb. The name Yahweh means the Becoming One, and so God has expressed His nature in His name. God has expressed in His name His desire, for it is His desire to become to you whatever your need may be. So the name of Yahweh was often compounded with other Hebrew words. So you have the Yahweh-Raphah, the Lord has become our healer. Yahweh-Shalom, the Lord has become our peace. Yahweh-Jireh, the Lord will provide. Yahweh-Tsidkenu, the name of Jesus in the Kingdom Age. It won't be Yeshua, it will be more difficult for you, Ya-Tsidkenu, which means the Lord has become our righteousness. And He is. He is our righteousness for us who trust in Him. But the name was significant. The name of the Lord, or the name Yahweh is a strong tower. The book of Proverbs says, "The righteous runneth into it, and is safe" ( Proverbs 18:10 ).

Have you ever run into the name of the Lord, just sort of closed yourself around it and said, "Oh, Jesus! Lord Jesus!" And you just sort of have fled to the refuge of the name? In danger, in peril you've fled into the name of Jesus, "Oh, Jesus!" You feel that warmth and that protection and that comfort and that assurance of the name of Jesus.

The name Yahweh, Yeshua, is a strong tower; the righteous runneth into it and is safe. So, "They who thought upon His name, they who reverenced the Lord and thought upon His name." God keeps this book of remembrance, their names are written in the Book of Life, in His book of remembrances.

And [the Lord said,] they shall be mine ( Malachi 3:17 ),

I get so excited when I think of God speaking about me in the personal, possessive pronoun. When God speaks of me as, "My son, My child, My servant." Oh, how I love God to speak about me with a personal, possessive pronoun. I belong to Him; I'm His. "They shall be mine," the Lord said.

and in that day when I make up my jewels ( Malachi 3:17 );

You are His treasure, Peter said, "for we are His peculiar treasure." The Lord speaks of you as a treasure that was hid in the field, that He bought the whole field that He might take the treasure out of it. Paul in writing to the Ephesians prayed that God might open up their understanding, that they might know what is the exceeding riches of His inheritance in the saints. Now in another place he said, "Oh, I wish you knew what God has in store for you, the riches, and the glory of God's kingdom." But then he is praying, "Oh, God help them to understand the riches of His inheritance." In other words, God help you to understand how much God values you. We're so often putting ourselves down. "Oh, I'm not worthy. Oh, I'm nothing. Oh, I'm just so miserable." And we're oftentimes putting ourselves down, and God looks upon you as a valuable gem, as a treasure. "And in those days when I make up my jewels," the Lord says. He treasures you and He values you so highly that He was willing to send His Only Begotten Son to take your sin and to die in your place that He might redeem this world, in order that He might claim you as "My child." All possible because Jesus paid the price of the redemption for the world, that you might be saved. "They shall be Mine, saith the Lord of hosts, in that day when I make up my jewels;"

and I will spare them, as a man spares his own son that serves him ( Malachi 3:17 ). "

Dr. Constable's Expository Notes

E. Negative motivation: the coming messenger of judgment 3:1-6

Like the first address (Malachi 1:2 to Malachi 2:9), this one ends with more motivation. Unpleasant things would happen if the people failed to change in their dealings with one another. The warning centers around the coming of another messenger whose arrival would bring judgment in the future. This section contains four predictions (Malachi 3:1 a, Malachi 3:1 b, Malachi 3:3, Malachi 3:5).

Dr. Constable's Expository Notes

When the Lord came suddenly to His temple, no one would be able to stand before Him. Elsewhere the prophets foretold that this time would be a day of judgment on the whole world marked by disaster and death (Malachi 4:1; Isaiah 2:12; Joel 3:11-16; Amos 5:18-21; Zechariah 1:14-17). Here Malachi said no one would be able to endure His coming because He would purify the priesthood, the people who stood closest to Him. As a fire He would burn up the impurities of the priests, and as a laundryman’s soap He would wash them clean (cf. Deuteronomy 4:29; Isaiah 1:25; Jeremiah 6:29-30; Ezekiel 22:17-22; Zechariah 3:5). The Levitical priests would then be able to offer sacrifices to Yahweh in a righteous condition rather than as they were in Malachi’s day (cf. Malachi 1:6 to Malachi 2:9; Isaiah 56:7; Isaiah 66:20-23; Jeremiah 33:18; Ezekiel 40:38-43; Ezekiel 43:13-27; Ezekiel 45:9-25; Zechariah 14:16-21). The multiple figures of cleansing and the repetition of terms for cleansing stress the thoroughness of the change that the Lord’s Messenger would produce.

"Christ’s atoning death meant that the entire sacrifice-based system could be brought to an end, its assigned purposes having been fulfilled." [Note: Stuart, p. 1354.]

Gann's Commentary on the Bible

Mal. 3.3

3:3    sit = as a judge,

3:3    sons of Levi = esp priests, cf. Acts 6:7 xxx

Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible

And he shall sit [as] a refiner, and purifier of silver,.... Kimchi interprets this, as he does the latter part of the preceding verse Malachi 3:2, of the day, and not of the Lord, which he compares to a judge that sits and separates the guilty from the innocent; see 1 Corinthians 3:13 but it is to be understood of the Lord himself, and expresses his diligence in sitting and separating good men and principles from bad ones, just as silver is purified and refined from dross. Maimonides a understands the passage of the Messiah; for he says,

"in the days of the King Messiah, when his kingdom is restored, and all Israel shall be gathered to him, all will have their genealogies set right by his mouth, through the Holy Spirit that rests upon him, as it is said, "he shall sit a refiner and purifier":''

as a refiner sits and observes his metal while it is melting, and waits the proper time to pour it out and separate the dross from it; so Christ is here represented as sitting, while his people are purifying and refining by the various ways and means he makes use of: it denotes the continued care of Christ over them; his eye is upon them, that nothing be lost but their dross and corruption; and his patience in waiting to be gracious to them, and do them good; and his diligent attention to the proper season of doing it; designing by all that he does, not their hurt and damage, but their real good, for he saves them, though it be by fire; and indeed every trial and affliction is for the purifying of their souls, and the brightening of their graces, and increasing their spiritual experience, light, and knowledge.

And he shall purify the sons of Levi; the priests, either literally understood, some of these were converted from their evil principles and practices, and became obedient to the doctrines of the Gospel, Acts 6:7 or figuratively, the apostles of Christ and ministers of the Gospel, who were made clean by him; or rather all the people of God, who are made priests as well as kings, and are a royal priesthood, and are purified by Christ, both by his blood, and the imputation of his righteousness, by which they become without spot and blemish, and as white as snow; and by the Spirit in sanctification, he sprinkling clean water upon them, and purifying their hearts by faith in the blood of Jesus; and also by afflictive dispensations of Providence sanctified unto them. Mention is made of the priests and Levites, because these were so very corrupt in the times of Christ, and as appears from the preceding chapters.

And purge them as gold and silver; are purged in the fire from their dross: this shows of what worth and value, and in what esteem the Lord's people are to him; he reckons of them as gold and silver, and as his peculiar treasure: and it suggests, that before conversion they are joined unto and mixed with wicked men, comparable to dross; and that they have in them the dross, corruption, and impurity of sin; which is original and natural to them, and inherent in them, and which can only be removed by the grace of God and blood of Christ.

That they may offer unto the Lord an offering in righteousness; themselves, their bodies and souls; the sacrifices of prayer, praise, and alms deeds; to the offering up of which in righteousness, in sincerity and truth, in an upright way, it is necessary that a person should be purified by the blood of Christ, and sanctified by the grace of his Spirit.

a Hilchot Melachim, c. 12. sect. 3.

Henry's Complete Commentary on the Bible

      1 Behold, I will send my messenger, and he shall prepare the way before me: and the Lord, whom ye seek, shall suddenly come to his temple, even the messenger of the covenant, whom ye delight in: behold, he shall come, saith the LORD of hosts.   2 But who may abide the day of his coming? and who shall stand when he appeareth? for he is like a refiner's fire, and like fullers' soap:   3 And he shall sit as a refiner and purifier of silver: and he shall purify the sons of Levi, and purge them as gold and silver, that they may offer unto the LORD an offering in righteousness.   4 Then shall the offering of Judah and Jerusalem be pleasant unto the LORD, as in the days of old, and as in former years.   5 And I will come near to you to judgment; and I will be a swift witness against the sorcerers, and against the adulterers, and against false swearers, and against those that oppress the hireling in his wages, the widow, and the fatherless, and that turn aside the stranger from his right, and fear not me, saith the LORD of hosts.   6 For I am the LORD, I change not; therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed.

      The first words of this chapter seem a direct answer to the profane atheistical demand of the scoffers of those days which closed the foregoing chapter: Where is the God of judgment? To which it is readily answered, "Here he is; he is just at the door; the long-expected Messiah is ready to appear; and he says, For judgment have I come into this world, for that judgment which you have so impudently bid defiance to." One of the rabbin says that the meaning of this is, That God will raise up a righteous King, to set things in order, even the king Messiah. And the beginning of the gospel of Christ is expressly said to be the accomplishment of this promise, with which the Old Testament concludes, Mark 1:1; Mark 1:2. So that by this the two Testaments are, as it were, tacked together, and made to answer one another. Now here we have,

      I. A prophecy of the appearing of his forerunner John the Baptist, which the prophet Isaiah had foretold (Isaiah 40:3; Isaiah 40:3), as the preparing of the way of the Lord, to which this seems to have a reference, for the words of the latter prophets confirmed those of the former: Behold, I will send my messenger, or I do send him, or I am sending him. "I am determined to send him; he will now shortly come, and will not come unsent, though to a careless generation he comes unsent for." Observe, 1. He is God's messenger; that is his office; he is Malachi (so the word is), the same with the name of this prophet; he is my angel, my ambassador. John Baptist had his commission from heaven, and not of men. All held John Baptist for a prophet, for he was God's messenger, as the prophets were, and came on the same errand to the world that they were sent upon--to call men to repentance and reformation. 2. He is Christ's harbinger: He shall prepare the way before me, by calling men to those duties which qualify them to receive the comforts of the Messiah and his coming, and by taking them off from a confidence in their relation to Abraham as their father (which, they thought, would serve their turn without a saviour), and by giving notice that the Messiah was now at hand, and so raising men's expectations of him, and making them readily to go into the measures he would take for the setting up of his kingdom in the world. Note, God observes a method in his work, and, before he comes, takes care to have his way prepared. This is like the giving of a sign. The church was told, long before, that the Messiah would come; and here it is added that, a little before he appears, there shall be a signal given; a great prophet shall arise, that shall give notice of his approach, and call to the everlasting gates and doors to lift up their heads and give him admission. The accomplishment of this is a proof that Jesus is the Christ, is he that should come, and we are to look for no other; for there was such a messenger sent before him, who made ready a people prepared for the Lord,Luke 1:17. The Jewish writers run into gross absurdities to evade the conviction of this evidence; some of them say that this messenger is the angel of death, who shall take the wicked out of this life, to be sent into hell torments; others of them say that it is Messiah the son of Joseph, who shall appear before Messiah the son of David; others, this prophet himself; others, an angel from heaven: such mistakes do those run into that will not receive the truth.

      II. A prophecy of the appearing of the Messiah himself: "The Lord, whom you seek, shall suddenly come to his temple, even the God of judgment, who, you think, has forsaken the earth, and you wot not what has become of him. The Messiah has been long called he that should come, and you may assure yourselves that now shortly he will come." 1. He is the Lord--Adonai, the basis and foundation on which the world is founded and fastened, the ruler and governor of all, that one Lord over all (Acts 10:36) that has all power committed to him (Matthew 28:18) and is to reign over the house of Jacob for ever,Luke 1:33. 2. He is the Messenger of the covenant, or the angel of the covenant, that blessed one that was sent from heaven to negotiate a peace, and settle a correspondence, between God and man. He is the angel, the archangel, the Lord of the angels, who received commission from the Father to bring man home to God by a covenant of grace, who had revolted from him by the violation of the covenant of innocency. Christ is the angel of this covenant, by whose mediation it is brought about and established as God's covenant with Israel was made by the disposition of angels,Acts 7:53; Galatians 3:19. Christ, as a prophet, is the messenger and mediator of the covenant; nay, he is given for a covenant,Isaiah 49:8. That covenant which is all our salvation began to be spoken by the Lord,Hebrews 2:3. Though he is the prince of the covenant (as some read this) yet he condescended to be the messenger of it, that we might have full assurance of God's good-will towards man, upon his word. 3. He it is whom you seek, whom you delight in, whom the pious Jews expect and desire, and whose coming they think of with a great deal of pleasure. In looking and waiting for him, they looked for redemption in Jerusalem and waited for the consolation of Israel,Luke 2:25; Luke 2:38. Christ was to be the desire of all nations, desirable to all (Haggai 2:7); but he was the desire of the Jewish nation actually, because they had the promise of his coming made to them. Note, Those that seek Jesus shall find pleasure in him. If he be our heart's desire he will be our heart's delight; and we have reason to delight in him who is the messenger of the covenant, and to bid him welcome who came to us on so kind an errand. 4. He shall suddenly come; his coming draws nigh, and we see it not at so great a distance as the patriarchs saw it at. Or, He shall come immediately after the appearing of John Baptist, shall even tread on the heels of his forerunner; when that morning-star appears, believe that the Sun of righteousness is not far off. Or, He shall come suddenly, that is, he shall come when by many he is not looked for; as his second coming will be, so his first coming was, at midnight, when some had done looking for him, for shall he find faith on the earth?Luke 18:8. The Jews reckon the Messiah among the things that come unawares; so Dr. Pocock. And the coming of the Son of man in his day is said to be as the lightning, which is very surprising, Luke 17:24. 5. He shall come to his temple, this temple at Jerusalem, which was lately built, that latter house which he was to be the glory of. It is his temple, for it is his Father's house,John 2:16. Christ, at forty days old, was presented in the temple, and thither Simeon went by the Spirit, according to the direction of this prophecy, to see him, Luke 2:27. At twelve years old he was in the temple about his Father's business,Luke 2:49. When he rode in triumph into Jerusalem, it should seem that he went directly to the temple (Matthew 21:12), and (Malachi 3:14; Malachi 3:14) thither the blind and the lame came to him to be healed; there he often preached, and often disputed, and often wrought miracles. By this it appears that the Messiah was to come while that temple was standing; that, therefore, being long since destroyed, we must conclude that he has come, and we are to look for no other. Note, Those that would be acquainted with Christ and obtain his favour must meet him in his temple, for there he records his name and there he will bless his people. There we must receive his oracles and there we must pay our homage. 6. The promise of this coming is repeated and ratified: Behold, he shall come, saith the Lord of hosts; you may depend upon his word, who cannot lie, he shall come, he will come, he will not tarry.

      III. An account given of the great ends and intentions of his coming, Malachi 3:2; Malachi 3:2. He is one whom they seek, and one whom they delight in; and yet who may abide the day of his coming? It is a thing to be thought of with great seriousness, and with a holy awe and reverence; for who shall stand when he appears, though he comes not to condemn the world, but that the world through him might have life? This may refer,

      1. To the terrors of his appearance. Even in the days of his flesh there were some emanations of his glory and power, such as none could stand before, witness his transfiguration, and the prodigies that attended his death; and we read of some that trembled before him, as Mark 5:33.

      2. To the troublous times that should follow soon after. The Jewish doctors speak of the pangs or griefs of the Messiah, meaning (they say) the great afflictions that should be to Israel at the time of his coming; he himself speaks of great tribulation then approaching, such as was not since the beginning of the world, nor ever shall be,Matthew 24:21.

      3. To the trial which his coming would make of the children of men. He shall be like a refiner's fire, which separates between the gold and the dross by melting the ore, or like fuller's soap, which with much rubbing fetches the spots out of the cloth. Christ came to discover men, that the thoughts of many hearts might be revealed (Luke 2:35), to distinguish men, to separate between the precious and the vile, for his fan in his hand (Matthew 3:12), to send fire on the earth, not peace, but rather division (Luke 12:49; Luke 12:51), to shake heaven and earth, that the wicked might be shaken out (Job 38:13) and that the things which cannot be shaken might remain,Hebrews 12:27. See what the effect of the trial will be that shall be made by the gospel.

      (1.) The gospel shall work good upon those that are disposed to be good, to them it shall be a savour of life unto life (Malachi 3:3; Malachi 3:3): He shall sit as a refiner. Christ by his gospel shall purify and reform his church, and by his Spirit working with it shall regenerate and cleanse particular souls; for to this end he gave himself for the church, that he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word (Ephesians 5:26) and purify to himself a peculiar people,Titus 2:14. Christ is the great refiner. Observe, [1.] Who they are that he will purify--the sons of Levi, all those that are devoted to his praise and employed in his service, as the tribe of Levi was, and whom he designs to make unto our God spiritual priests (Revelation 1:6), a holy priesthood,1 Peter 2:5. Note, All true Christians are sons of Levi, set apart for God, to do the service of his sanctuary, and to war the good warfare. [2.] How he will purify them; he will purge them as gold and silver, that is, he will sanctify them inwardly; he will not only wash away the spots they have contracted from without, but will take away the dross that is found in them; he will separate from them their indwelling corruptions, which rendered their faculties worthless and useless, and so make them like gold refined, both valuable and serviceable. He will purge them with fire, as gold and silver are purged, for he baptizes with the Holy Ghost and with fire (Matthew 3:11), with the Holy Ghost working like fire. He will purge them by afflictions and manifold temptations, that the trial of their faith may be found to praise and honour,1 Peter 1:6; 1 Peter 1:7. He will purge them so as to make them a precious people to himself. [3.] What will be the effect of it: That they may offer unto the Lord an offering in righteousness, that is, that they may be in sincerity converted to God and consecrated to his praise (hence we read of the offering up, or sacrificing, of the Gentiles to God, when they were sanctified by the holy Ghost,Romans 15:16), and that they may in a spiritual manner worship God according to his will, may offer the sacrifices of righteousness, (Psalms 4:5), the offering of prayer, and praise, and holy love, that they may be the true worshippers, who worship the Father in spirit and in truth,John 4:23; John 4:24. Note, We cannot offer unto the Lord any right performances in religion unless our persons be justified and sanctified. Till we ourselves be refined and purified by the grace of God, we cannot do any thing that will redound to the glory of God. God had respect to Abel first, and then to his offering; and therefore God purges his people, that they may offer their offerings to him in righteousness, Zephaniah 3:9. He makes the tree good that the fruit may be good. And then it follows (Malachi 3:4; Malachi 3:4), The offering of Judah and Jerusalem shall be pleasant unto the Lord. It shall no longer be offensive, as it has been, when, in the former days, they worshipped other gods with the God of Israel, or when, in the present days, they brought the torn, and the lame, and the sick, for sacrifice; but it shall be acceptable; he will be pleased with the offerers, and their offerings, as in the days of old and as in former years, as in the primitive times of the church, as when God had respect to Abel's sacrifice and smelled a savour of rest from Noah's, and when he kindled Aaron's sacrifice with fire from heaven. When the Messiah comes, First, He will, by his grace in them, make them acceptable; when he has purified and refined them, then they shall offer such sacrifices as God requires and will accept. Secondly, He will, by his intercession for them, make them accepted; he will recommend them and their performances to God, so that their prayers, being perfumed with the incense of his intercession, shall be pleasant unto the Lord; for he has made us accepted in the Beloved, and in him is well pleased with those that are in him (Matthew 3:17) and bring forth fruit in him.

      (2.) It shall turn for a testimony against those that are resolved to go on in their wickedness, Malachi 3:5; Malachi 3:5. This is the direct answer to their challenge, "Where is the God of judgment? You shall know where he is, and shall know it to your terror and confusion, for I will come near to you to judgment; to you that set divine justice at defiance." To them the gospel of Christ will be a savour of death unto death; it will bind them over to condemnation and will judge them in the great day, John 12:48. Let us see here, [1.] Who the sinners are that must appear to be judged by the gospel of Christ. They are the sorcerers, who died in spiritual wickedness, that forsake the oracles of the God of truth to consult the father of lies; and the adulterers, who wallow in the lusts of the flesh, those adulterers who were charged with dealing treacherously (Malachi 2:15; Malachi 2:15); and the false swearers, who profane God's name and affront his justice, by calling him to witness to a lie; and the oppressors, who barbarously injure and trample upon those who lie at their mercy, and are not able to help themselves: they defraud the hireling in his wages and will not give him what he agreed for; they crush the widow and fatherless, and will not pay them their just debts, because they cannot prove them, or have not wherewithal to sue for them; the poor stranger too, who has no friend to stand by him and is ignorant of the laws of the country, they turn aside from his right, so that he cannot keep or cannot recover his own. That which is at the bottom of all this is, They fear not me, saith the Lord of hosts. The transgression of the wicked plainly declares that there is no fear of God before his eyes. Where no fear of God is no good is to be expected. [2.] Who will appear against them: I will come near, says God, and will be a swift witness against them. They justify themselves, and, their sins having been artfully concealed, hope to escape punishment for want of proof; but God, who sees and knows all things, will himself be witness against them, and his omniscience is instead of a thousand witnesses, for to it the sinner's own conscience shall be made to subscribe, and so every mouth shall be stopped. He will be a swift witness; though they reflect upon him as slow and dilatory, and ask, Where is the God of judgment, and where the promise of his coming? they will find that he is not slack concerning his threatenings any more than he is concerning his promises. Judgment against those sinners shall not be put off for want of evidence, for he will be a swift witness. His judgment shall overtake them, and it shall be impossible for them to outrun it. Evil pursues sinners.

      IV. The ratification of all this (Malachi 3:6; Malachi 3:6): For I am the Lord; I change not; therefore you sons of Jacob are not consumed. Here we have, 1. God's immutability asserted by Himself, and glorified in: "I am the Lord; I change not; and therefore no word that I have spoken shall fall to the ground." Is God a just revenger of those that rebel against him? Is he the bountiful rewarder of those that diligently seek him? In both these he is unchangeable. Though the sentence passed against evil works (Malachi 3:5; Malachi 3:5) be not executed speedily, yet it will be executed, for he is the Lord; he changes not; he is as much an enemy to sin as ever he was, and impenitent sinners will find him so. There needs no scire facias--a writ calling one to show cause, to revive God's judgment, for it is never antiquated, or out of date, but against those that go on still in their trespasses the curse of his law still remains in full force, power, and virtue. 2. A particular proof of it, from the comfortable experience which the people of Israel had had of it. They had reason to say that he was an unchangeable God, for he had been faithful to his covenant with them and their fathers; if he had not adhered to that, they would have been consumed long ago and cut off from being a people; they had been false and fickle in their conduct to him, and he might justly have abandoned them, and then they would soon have been consumed and ruined; but because he remembered his covenant, and would not violate that, nor alter the thing that had gone forth out of his lips, they were preserved from ruin and recovered from the brink of it. It was purely because he would be as good as his word, Deuteronomy 7:8; Leviticus 26:42. Now as God had kept them from ruin, while the covenant of peculiarity remained in force, purely because he would be faithful to that covenant, and would show that he is not a man that he should lie (Numbers 23:19), so, when that covenant should be superseded and set aside by the New Testament, and they, by rejecting the blessings of it, lay themselves open to the curses, he will show that in the determinations of his wrath, as well as in those of his mercy, he is not a man, that he should repent, but will then be as true to his threatenings as hitherto he had been to his promises; see 1 Samuel 15:29. We may all apply this very sensibly to ourselves; because we have to do with a God that changes not, therefore it is that we are not consumed, even because his compassions fail not; they are new every morning; great is his faithfulness,Lamentations 3:22; Lamentations 3:23.

Kelly Commentary on Books of the Bible

Lectures on the Minor Prophets.

W. Kelly.

The Lord has not been pleased to give us much express information of the prophets in general, with the exception of Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Daniel, and in a measure of Ezekiel and Jonah. Of the rest we know but little, and of none less than of Malachi. So much so that some have indulged in no small imagination about him, yea, have doubted, as learned men will doubt (none more probably), of his proper existence, some of course making him out to be anybody else than himself. I do not see what is the object or the profit gained by such speculations; or why people should suppose that he was not a man at all but an angel. It may be well briefly to allude to these dreams if it were only to show the exceeding want of good sense, to say no more, of such as indulge in them, and to caution souls against the trashy way in which they occupy themselves and their readers.

It is clear that God has an object where He does not speak as truly as where He does, and the essential difference of the prophet from others lies in his giving us not man's mind but God's revelations, though surely for the good of man. If then the person of the prophet be hidden, we may gather that it is best to leave it so. The design is only met by what God had to say. It seems plain however both by position in the canon and by internal character that the last of the prophets is to be classed with the last of the sacred historians, Malachi with Nehemiah, as Haggai and Zechariah are expressly with Ezra.

"The burden of the word of Jehovah to Israel by Malachi." Let him be a person but little known, at least we should know the burden of the word of Jehovah by him. These were the last prophetic words. The nature of the case shows that, if we had no kind of tradition, a spiritual mind ought to say that Malachi is necessarily the latest of the prophets. As Moses himself has a place, naturally the earliest in the Old Testament so Malachi just as simply is the last. The whole strain of Malachi falls in with this. There does not therefore seem the slightest reason to question the soundness of the arrangement by which he is put at the end of the prophets in the Jewish canon. One ought never lightly to disturb facts of an external nature generally received though one may not make them a matter of faith. But it is not good to call everything in question. There is no small difference between not doubting and believing. We are not called to believe except where God speaks. On the other hand, where is the wisdom or the modesty of doubting what is without evidence for us, yet generally accredited. The best way is to let such parts alone?

But here there are moral considerations. The book consists largely of various moral appeals; and they are of such a nature as to indicate that they are the last words of the Old Testament. They leave nothing before or between the Messiah Himself except His messenger. From Him they pass by our calling altogether and go on to what follows Christianity the mission of Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of Jehovah. For we must remember that Christianity is no prolongation or improvement of Judaism. It is a thing of its own kind. If it follows, and could not but follow Judaism, it is none the less completely a thing of another clime and character, like the sheet that was let down from heaven and went up again in the vision of the Roman centurion.

The book opens with words just as suitable as those with which it closes. "I have loved you, saith Jehovah." It is the expression of sorrow, but certainly of affection. "I have loved you, saith Jehovah. Yet ye say, Wherein hast thou loved us?" I was going to call it a disappointed affection; and in one sense this is true. But we must bear in mind that in another sense there is nothing that fails with God. He steadily carries out what is wisest and best, though it may be ever so humiliating for man. He does not force His purposes, nor anticipate in His ways what is suitable to the present state of His people and testimony. But in a most real sense we may say that, if there be continual disappointment on the surface, there is always the onward accomplishment of what is for His own glory, and this is nowhere more verified than where all seems confusion on the outside. It is necessary that the creature should be put to shame, being now in a fallen state and its very condition one great lie against God nay, a great lie against itself, false to its own nature, false to the law of its being as created of God or called of God, as the case may be.

In this case how unbecoming the language of Israel: "Wherein hast thou loved us?" What was it for Israel to ask such a question of Jehovah? Yet He deigns to answer in grace: "I have loved you, saith Jehovah; yet ye say, Wherein hast thou loved us?" Jehovah, as usual, rises up to the source of things. "Was not Esau Jacob's brother? saith Jehovah: yet I loved Jacob." Then He adds, "and I hated Esau." I do not think it would be true to draw this inference at the beginning of their history. But it is just an instance of what the best of men do in their haste. God withholds the sentence of hatred till it is evidently justified by the conduct and ways of Esau, more particularly towards Jacob, but indeed towards Himself. In short, it would be quite true to say that God loved Jacob from the first, but that He never pronounces hatred until that be manifest which utterly repels and rejects Himself with contempt, deliberately going on in pursuit of its own way and will in despisal of God. Then only does He say, "I hated Esau." Along with this He draws attention to the fact that He "laid his mountains and his heritage waste for the dragons of the wilderness." Thus, apart from such profanity, if God "despiseth not any," we may be perfectly sure He hates not any. Such an idea could not enter a mind which was nurtured in the word of God, apart from the reasonings of men. I say not this because of the smallest affinity with what is commonly called Arminianism; for I have just as little affinity with Calvinism. I believe the one to be as derogatory to God's glory as the other, though in very different ways the one by exalting man most unduly, and the other by prescribing for God, and consequently not saying the thing that is right of Him.

Abstract reasoning is like that of Job's friends, who were not bad Calvinists before Calvin, but they certainly did not say the thing that was right of Jehovah as Job did. The reason was this that Job did not indulge in theories about God and His government as they did. Job held to what he knew. Not that he had not his faults; for he showed himself at length naughty and disputed against God's ways, as we know. But he was right in rejecting their effort to carry their point by human reasonings, which, ignorant of God's grace as much as of His government, insinuated that the tried saint was only a hypocrite after all. He was really farther from it than any of them; and justly crave to the Lord, no matter what they might urge: cockles might grow instead of barley before he would give up his integrity. He would not forswear God's grace nor his own faith. Things must lose their nature and the creatures of God change their being before Job would yield to man in what touched his relationship with God. No doubt there was too much vindication of himself, and there he was wrong; but he was right about God. He was quite sure that God was Himself, and would not deny Job, and held to both firmly. He was quite sure that none of his inquisitors loved God better, and this too was true. The book is a fine unfolding of man with God and God with man: nothing is finer in all Old Testament scripture in this way. Such is the value of a real knowledge of God; it may be imperfect and it may require to be corrected, but there is a real knowledge of God, and this too in the face of human reasonings which may come from pious men, but are none the better for that. I see little difference between the reasonings of the pious and of others when they judge by appearances and speak outside the revealed truth of God. Nobody can answer or feel for God. No one can by searching find Him out; still less can any by reasoning anticipate His ways. And there is seen the blessedness of the pursuit. For knowledge of God is open to the simplest, yet withal is it the only joy and strength of the greatest saint or servant whom God ever formed. There is no difference as to this in principle: the most mature is as much beholden to the word of God as the least; and what lifts up the least is the only thing that gives real truth or solidity to the strongest.

This is a grave practical lesson, and Malachi, I think, is deeply interesting in this way. At the beginning of the history of Jacob and Esau we find the purpose of God before the children were born. Indeed to make election a question of the deserts in the two parties is simply to destroy its nature, if allowed in word. Election is necessarily from God entirely apart from those that are the objects of it, as it means the exercise of His sovereign choice. If there is the smallest ground in the party chosen because of which God chooses, it is not His choice, but rather a moral discernment, which, far from being sovereign, is only an appraisal whether the person deserves or not. One may hold then as strongly as the stoutest Calvinist the free sovereign choice of God, but the reprobation of the wicked which the Calvinist draws from it, as an equally sovereign decree, is in my judgment a grave error. I do not therefore scruple to say a word upon it now, inasmuch as it is an important thing in both doctrine and practice. The idea that, if God chooses one, He must reprobate another whom He does not choose, is a fallacy and without, yea against, scripture. This is exactly where human influence comes in; that is, the petty self-confidence of man's mind. Now I do not see why we as believers should be petty; there is every reason why we should gather what is great for God. To be simple is all well; but this too is a very different thing from being petty, and no reason why we should limit ourselves to ourselves; for what does God reveal His mind for? Surely that we should know Him, and be imitators of Him.

To my own mind then it is full of the deepest interest, that while God chose before the children were born, and decided what was to be the lot of the one relatively to the other, He never made any man to be a sinner. No doubt the children of Adam are conceived in sin and shapen in iniquity; mankind are born in that condition. Their whole being is lost in it. It is no question therefore of making man a sinner, because since the fall he departed from God and the race is evil without exception. Man belongs to a stock now wholly depraved evil the sad and universal heirloom. God's election is entirely independent of what He finds, and spite of all evil. He elects angels no doubt that never fell: even so they had nothing to do with determining the rest who were not so kept. In every case it is simply a question of God's choice. But the fallen condition of man gives to God's election, where sinners are the only possible objects, an exceeding beauty and very deep moment. He chooses entirely apart from anything that deserves it, in the face of all that is out of harmony with Himself. It is not so where He judges and rejects.

When He says "Esau have I hated," He waits to the last moment, till Esau has shown what he is. The first book of the Bible lets us see His choice of Jacob. Only the last book tells us of His hatred of Esau. I do not say that we do not find His moral condemnation of Esau's spirit long before this, but He is patient in the execution of judgment. Long-suffering belongs to God, and is inseparable from His moral nature, while He delays to execute judgment on evil. All-powerful and good, He is nevertheless for that very reason perfect in patience. Now the sentence comes forth from His lips, and may well be felt to be a serious matter.

Yet Esau's ill-conduct to Jacob was not the only or the worst element of evil which comes into judgment. He was profane Godward, despising everything done on God's part, save that which brought sensibly before him the greater dignity to which his brother was promoted. Then he who sold it for a morsel of meat in the hour of want feels and resents keenly his loss of place and honour, even though he seemed one of those characters devoted only to that which man can do in this present life. He had no confidence in God: beyond this life no thought, no desire. If he could live in ease and honour, not without energy and action, that was enough for Esau. Why should he seek more than to enjoy present life, or, if needful, carry his point by main force? But that is practically a denial of God, particularly of His goodness and His sovereign choice. It is also a denial of one's own sin, of the real import of death, of resurrection, and of glory. There was undoubtedly a great deal unsatisfactory enough in Jacob, just as there is alas! in most of us. There is a great deal beyond question which proves how brittle and broken we are as men. Jacob shows us the difference by comparison with one who walked with God, and hence styled with singular beauty the friend of God. Jacob stands in painful contrast with Abraham in many respects. Though Abraham, we know, failed gravely now and then, still failure was not what characterized him in the same way as it chequered (we will not say characterized) Jacob. Intercourse with God stamped its attractive, softening, ennobling influence with a wonderful disinterestedness on Abraham's life and ways; whereas Jacob has the feebleness that belongs to one who knew not so to walk with God by faith. Craft, or a mind ever seeking to manage and so accomplish his ends, belongs to such as he. Self tarnished, but did not shut out God, with nothing but will to govern: this is rather what we see in Esau. Jacob was really a different man. Even when going on with his devices to benefit himself, he looked to God for a blessing of which he realised the need. Thus it was certainly by no means the happiest form of the life of faith far from it; hence a great deal takes the shape of warning to us in Jacob as in most, but genuine faith was there spite of all. Thus, not having a good conscience, he fell into a sort of fraud on his brother Esau in the first instance, and not much better when we last hear of the brothers meeting each other. We must remember he was a man naturally timid: only dependence on God does not find but make us what we should be.

"And I hated Esau, and laid his mountains and his heritage waste for the dragons of the wilderness." God was against him. "Whereas Edom saith, We are impoverished, but we will return and build the desolate places." Thus we see the strength' of will to the last: he would fight it out even with God. "Thus saith Jehovah of hosts, They shall build, but I will throw down; and they shall call them, The border of wickedness, and, The people against whom Jehovah hath indignation for ever. And your eyes shall see, and ye shall say, Jehovah will be magnified from the border of Israel."

Then the prophet comes to closer quarters. "A son honoureth his father, and a servant his master: if then I be a father, where is mine honour? and if I be a master, where is my fear? saith Jehovah of hosts unto you, O priests, that despise my name. And ye say, Wherein have we despised thy name?" The higher the relation, the greater the danger where God is not before the soul. It is not only that sin in such is more serious, but also there is greater exposure to it. A priest has to walk not merely as becomes a man outside the sanctuary, but as one who goes into it. There was a more perfect consecration in the case of a priest than with an Israelite; and familiarity with the presence of God, unless it be kept up in His fear, borders on contempt. "If I be a master, where is my fear? saith Jehovah of hosts unto you, O priests, that despise my name. And ye say, Wherein have we despised thy name?" Hardness of conscience goes where there is habitual carelessness as to God, while at the same time keeping up appearances Men thus become insensible to all. "Ye offer polluted bread upon mine altar; and ye say, Wherein have we polluted thee? In that ye say, The table of Jehovah is contemptible."

It had a voice of deep insult to God, however they might seek to excuse it. This is a serious thing practically for the Christian now. A man will endure in worship what he would not suffer anywhere else. Many who are critical enough about the preaching make very light of the prayers, have no sympathy with much, and would alter or throw it overboard. They bear with the general service often for the sake of the sermon. Now it is surely a serious thing when we remember what worship should be; and I am not speaking of an imaginary case. There is nothing which more betrays the state of people than their prayers, unless it be their hymns or, in general, their worship. Therefore the ordinary form of prayer and hymns, being wholly beneath true worshippers adoring in Spirit and in truth, is a fatal sign and shows how low they are sunk. For certainly worship ought to be the highest expression of spiritual devotedness toward God. If real, it ostensibly rises up as the outgoing of the power of the Holy Spirit to God Himself. A sermon is quite a different thing; it has its place and value of course, but its direction is toward men, the hearers. Without being hypercritical about terms, let the discourse be addressed to the unconverted to show them the way to be saved, or to the converted to instruct them in the truth of God more perfectly, it clearly has man for its object, converted or unconverted, or both, but assuredly man.

But evidently what has God for its object ought not to be polluted ought not to be what people know is beneath His grace and truth, or unsuited even supposing, it were true, and not according to the height of the faith of those that present it. There is scarce anything which has a more lowering effect than habitual contentedness in worship with what is not the character of praise our hearts feel to be due to God; and yet I suppose there is nothing in which even children of God put up with more shortcomings than here. Thousands of Christians know that what they acquiesce in as worship is not according to God's mind. They bear with it for reasons of their own, certainly not for God's honour. This is sometimes the case where there is not an outward or fixed form. We have known, among such as externally are free enough, how there may be an order formed by traditional habits and ways which is inconsistent with God's will. Do not be deceived by appearances: unwritten prayers may offend as really as written ones. Its being an extempore prayer does not make it spiritual: and if it be a bad one, it is the worse because unwritten. For he who prays by that very fact is free, and yet the prayer is low and bad. Of course nothing heterodox is supposed or anything morally injurious: I mean simply what is unsuitable to one who stands in conscious redemption, and has the Holy Ghost indwelling and making him the temple of God. Now I say that this is the position of every Christian, and that worship is founded on the place in which Christ has set him, the revelation of Christ as He is risen and in heaven.

Take, for instance, the common habit of getting on the ground of the Almightiness of God or the name of Jehovah. How could a Christian who knows what he is saying fall back on either out of the place of a child with his Father or of a member of Christ? I can understand a person bringing both in by a slip; but there would be always the correction at hand perhaps the person having a consciousness more or less that it was so, or the Spirit of God would give him something altogether better. On the other hand, it seems wrong above all in prayer or worship to be too critical about what is said by others. It is a miserable thing to be sifting prayers or worship where we ought to be praising God with simplicity. But it may be a necessary duty where there is that which falsifies what ought to go up to God acceptably.

This may show the great analogy between what is going on now in Christendom with the state described in Malachi; and I am perfectly persuaded that Christendom has taken a serious stride of late years into a farther departure from God, and that the Jewish spirit (and Gentile too) of love for outward forms and splendour of building and music and appearance in general has developed immensely: in short there is a kind of race of rivalry in Christendom generally as to this. Those who not many years since used to be remarkable for their simplicity, and in fact were wont to indulge in rather opprobrious comments on national bodies for it, are now really seeking to out-do them in the same taste. All this appears to be a very deplorable thing for the children of God. I do not say a word about men of the world. These people of course cannot be debarred from having temples if they please: God will judge them by and by. But our business surely, as children of God, is with the interests of Christ. We have the interests of His love and of His glory, and to me it is serious that the state of Christians should be so singularly like that which is supposed in the very verses of Malachi we have been looking at.

Now much of the negligence is due to the assumption that God has left nothing definite in His word as to a great deal which they consider outward and nonessential. Willing to bear all that in mind, still I say, how comes it that they should be false to their own position, and allow themselves to sink below their communion with God, and their own knowledge of the gospel in worship the very place where we ought most to be at the height of what we know? The truth is that the scriptural idea of worship has never had its place in their souls. Hence they get into the habit of speaking of the preaching of the gospel as worship. The united praise of God, in contradistinction to teaching or preaching, is almost lost sight of. Then again men go on in their usual routine in that exercise of conscience as to pleasing God in it.

There is a Large class with whom one occasionally meets who have some thought of worship, and who know what is not worship; but unfortunately these may be obscure about the gospel. One dislikes referring to names; but those commonly called "high churchmen" have notions of worship though extremely wanting in sense of liberty: I am speaking now of godly persons for there are such among them. They in general have stricter thoughts of worship, such as it is, than many who are before them in point of knowledge. Their standard may be low; but still, in their measure, they understand worship to be the outpouring of the heart to God. Consequently they all tend in their zeal for the expression of worship to slight preaching. Now it is very evident that Christian wisdom is to slight neither the one nor the other in its place. The true course here, as everywhere, is to leave scope for all the word and will of God, whatever the thing may be, without confounding them together. It is impossible for a soul that has not liberty to worship in the power of the Spirit.

But there are curious inconsistencies among real Christians. Often persons are kept back by the difficulties that seem so vast and insurmountable; and in this way frequently godly men are kept back by the idea of doing good. I do not know a greater hindrance, nor anything more evil, in fact, than allowing the desire to do good more particularly in what people consider a large sphere to embarrass their action for the Lord, and their faithfulness to what they know. In this way godly men are held in fetters, contrary to what they know. The state of the soul in the presence of God, independent altogether of position, has much to do with the spirit of worship.

In the case of such men as Samuel Rutherford, devout and God-fearing in tone and spirit, I should think there was much of the outgoing of heart which responded to the grace of Christ whose personal glory was dear to them. This mingled itself with their conversation and service of every kind, though they did not know the Christian's death to law, and were in the greatest bondage as regards the true expression of worship. It is thus we see now and then godly souls, where a burning sense of who and what Christ is imparts the tone of the soul which goes out in worship, and so we recognise it largely in Rutherford of old, though in controversy his severity was something tremendous. Like many mild men we may have known, he startled his opponents by the extremely hard blows he dealt out to his adversaries. When one turns from his keen and trenchant defence of Presbyterianism or legality, it is difficult to realize that the same man wrote the letters which charm all who love the Saviour. But when we look in a little more closely, we see that doctrinally he was as cold as Calvin, the secret of his difference from his fellows being his power of telling out the joy of his heart in Christ's love.

This spiritual tone is ever attractive, and justly so; but much more is needed to set a soul on the solid ground of Christian worship. For this is required another thing besides the living faith working by love, which is kindled by such a knowledge of Christ as the Holy Ghost gives. We need the sense of complete freedom through Christ our Lord deliverance from flesh, world, law, everything that can come in between the soul and God. I speak now not of the power which here as everywhere is in the Holy Spirit, but of the condition antecedently requisite. That this is a matter of great moment will not be contested by those who love the saints of God for Christ's sake, and desire His honour in and by them. It is what we have most of all to seek with our brethren wherever they may be. For it ought never to be assumed. Many a Christian knows the prophetic word fairly and the truth in general, who is far from being consciously dead and so serving God. We must not then too hastily take this for granted that real believers are in this respect thoroughly clear as to their own souls. The same principle applies of course to knowledge about ecclesiastical position and government. It does not follow in this case any more; though church truth, while distinct, is connected more closely than prophecy with that which clears the soul. But we ought to set the full delivering grace of the gospel before every one that has been converted to God Even if those we come in contact with have been ever so long following the Lord, we should seek to learn whether they are consciously clear before God, and thus brought out of all bondage of spirit; for without this there must soon be not a few hitches and difficulties, by which in the day of trial unestablished persons break down, cause trouble, and certainly suffer in their own souls.

However we shall see what Jehovah thinks of the neglect of His name, and the slight put on His worship. "And if ye offer the blind for sacrifice, is it not evil?" It soon took the shape of what was really profane in Israel. "And if ye offer the lame and sick, is it not evil? offer it now unto thy governor; will he be pleased with thee, or accept thy person? saith Jehovah of hosts. And now, I pray you, beseech God that he will be gracious unto us; this hath been by your means: will he regard your persons? saith Jehovah of hosts. Who is there even among you that would shut the doors for nought?" And is not the love of mammon the known and confessed bane of Christendom?

Then we come to the next root of evil intense selfishness, which God brings out by the prophet. "Neither do ye kindle fire on mine altar for nought. I have no pleasure in you, saith Jehovah of hosts, neither will I accept an offering at your hand." But this very thing, the judgment of their evil morally, brings in, as in prophecy always, what God will do in His own gracious power; "for," says He, "from the rising of the sun even unto the going down of the same my name shall be great among the Gentiles." For Israel were profaning His name and insulting His worship. Then Jehovah undertakes the care of it Himself, and declares that He will make His name great among the Gentiles whom the Jews despised, and this everywhere, from places at hand to the remoter isles which will await His law. I understand this to be a promise not yet accomplished. Many may apply it (and this may be allowable in the way of principle) to what is going on now under the gospel. But it is evident on a closer inspection that the passage looks onward to the millennial day. "And in every place incense shall be offered unto my name, and a pure offering." This is an instructive and interesting prophecy, proving as it does that, while the temple at Jerusalem is to be the metropolitan temple for the worship of all nations, it will not be to the exclusion of means and places of worship among the Gentiles.

It follows that there will be a universal testimony to the true God among all the nations; and one can see how right this will be, and suitable to the new age. For although I do not doubt that God will then provide better means of going to Jerusalem than man's wit or skill has yet devised, still there would be a void indeed if there were no maintenance of God's worship anywhere save in that one centre. Grace has now under the gospel gone out to the nations; and God, though He may display new ways for His own glory, will never go back from this at least Under Christianity Jewish exclusiveness is unknown, because grace puts the believer even now in relation with heaven. In the future kingdom the Lord will take the earth as well as the heavens under His manifest sway, and the Jews and the Gentiles will be owned and blessed in their respective place on the earth, Israel having the position of special nearness but the nations rejoicing and worshipping everywhere; for Jehovah shall be King over all the earth: in that day shall there be one Jehovah, and His name one. Thus it will not be the Jew superseded or superseding in any way, but Jehovah going out in His goodness to all the Gentiles, while the mountain of His house is established in the top of the mountains and exalted above the hills, and the nations flow to it. Of that day, not of the present, Malachi speaks.

"In every place incense shall be offered unto my name, and a pure offering," in contrast with the polluted one which the priests of Israel presented then. I see no reason to conclude that the sacrificial terms are transferred from their original ceremonial objects and acts to such as are strictly spiritual, as we know now. (Hebrews 13:1-25, 1 Peter 2:1-25) The later chapters of Ezekiel, which clearly bear on the future, not on our time and position, are too explicit to be thus explained away, if indeed we prefer scripture authority to the thoughts and wishes of men. There is the strongest possible proof that the offerings will then be material, though no doubt used with intelligence and as memorials of the great sacrifice, when the blessing of the Gentiles will not be as now a reproach to Israel, but these will be as life from the dead to all the world. We must leave room for both these things, which are distinctly revealed and contrasted by the Holy Ghost in Romans 11:1-36. It is not therefore a question merely of interpreting the Old Testament, but of believing the interpretation authoritatively supplied to us by the great apostle of the Gentiles.

Doubtless the Romanist use of the passage is to the last degree puerile, and the more as they pretend the mass to be a witness of Christ's sacrifice where blood-shedding is essential. But the painful thought to my mind is the poverty of Protestant teachers, who apply the passage equally with Roman Catholics to the church now, instead of confessing worship in spirit and truth for the Christian, but the resumption of incense and offering by Jews and Gentiles by and by in the new age. Thus it appears to me certain that, beside the great centre of earthly worship for all in Jerusalem, literal offerings (and from Ezekiel we can add more) are here predicated of all the Gentiles in every place. Compare alsoZephaniah 2:11; Zephaniah 2:11 for the latter truth, and Isaiah 56:6-8 for the former. But both are for the future exclusively in the world or age to come: and the more we reflect upon it, the less need we wonder, and the more its importance will be felt by unprejudiced minds which tremble at God's word. Universal profession of Jehovah's name, not testimony only, will be the specific character of the millennial age. There may be gradation in the results; as it is plain there will be the highest manifestation as far as earth is concerned in Jerusalem. Israel will compose the inner circle for the earth, but not to the exclusion of divine and acceptable worship everywhere among the Gentiles; "for my name," says He, "shall be great among the heathen, saith Jehovah of hosts."

With the new heart given then to the Jew, he will rejoice in the flow of God's mercy to the Gentiles, and will call on all lands to shout joyfully to Jehovah will invite their old enemies to enter His gates with thanksgiving and His courts with praise; as even before the blessing is fully established they will pray that God's grace may shine on them, so that upon earth men may know His way, among all nations His salvation. How deep the change when old narrowness shall thus yield to grace, and the Jews will delight in all nations as such flocking up to Jerusalem! We have not forgotten how they heard Paul till the word from the Lord that he should be sent far from Jerusalem to the Gentiles. This was intolerable to their pride and jealousy: it was not fit, they cried, that such a fellow should live; but in that day they too will be Sauls no longer but Pauls. Many of the Psalms breathe the new spirit which will animate the generation to come, in vain now because of their blindness and hardness of unbelief, but to be full of life and power then.

The real source of the difficulty then is not the ambiguity of scripture, for contrariwise its language is clear and precise. It is due entirely to the habits of what is called spiritualising, so ingrained in Christendom since the days of Origen among the Greeks and Jerome among the Latins, though at work subtily from earliest days, when it came into constant collision with the apostle Paul. Not to maintain the distinctively earthly glory to Israel, as their future hope under Messiah and the new covenant, invariably undermines Christianity and the church, which flourish only in proportion to firmly holding Christ and union with Him in heavenly places. The danger of the Gentiles thus becoming wise in their own conceit, and forgetting that the natural branches are only broken off in part for a season from their own olive tree, is strongly laid down in Romans 11:1-36. Hold fast the new and heavenly glory for us with Christ dead, risen, and glorified, and you keep the promised earthly supremacy for Israel, who will (not reign with Him on high, but) be reigned over by Him when He appears again in glory, the undisputed Head of all things, heavenly and earthly.

For the heavenly people (who by the Holy Ghost sent down are one with Christ at the right hand of God, the great high priest, gone in through the rent veil) earthly sacrifices and incense, priesthood and sanctuary, are all passed and inconsistent with their standing and relationship. But it will not be so with the earthly people or the Gentiles who shall be blessed under His visible glory in the day which hastens. Theologians may dogmatize in an abstract manner; and their disciples may scorn to receive what will not mix with their traditions or their inferences; but the word of God is so explicit that a reverent and lowly man, if his knowledge were ever so scanty, should hesitate before he rejects that which is to be the distinctly revealed condition of this earth when the days of heaven shine on it, simply because he cannot make it fit into his religious system the principle of rationalism, even though it largely obtain among those who flatter themselves that they are most opposed to that system.

As to the re-appearance of a vast central temple on earth, a human priesthood, sacrifices, and every other peculiarity of a ritual religion, it appears to my mind indisputable in the end of Ezekiel. I am aware that the great mass of Dissenters are as opposed to such an idea as the less intelligent portion of the high and low church parties. None seem more horrified at it than the members of the Society of Friends. I may be allowed to say that I once glanced at a review of a book of mine in one of their organs, in which the writer gave me quite enough credit in other respects, but seemed to suspect a craze on the subject of a restored theocracy of Israel, converted yet with priests and sacrifices once more. Nor is it a question of a single, however considerable, portion of scripture. The Psalms and Prophets abound in anticipations of the new age, when the temple and its services and priesthood should be to Jehovah's praise, on a new ground indeed, but otherwise substantially similar. And as to Ezekiel 40:1-49; Ezekiel 41:1-26; Ezekiel 42:1-20; Ezekiel 43:1-27; Ezekiel 44:1-31; Ezekiel 45:1-25; Ezekiel 46:1-24; Ezekiel 47:1-23; Ezekiel 48:1-35 the evidence is so strong that even Dr. Henderson, trained in the most hostile school of Nonconformists, the Congregationalists, was forced to concede that, as far as the temple and its ordinances are concerned, the vision is to be interpreted literally, though he tries to take other parts symbolically. But it is plain that this is the inconsistency of a hard-pressed interpreter, and that the vision is homogeneous. The city, the distribution of the tribes, the healing waters, the return of the cherubic glory, all go together and point, not to an imperfect copy of certain points of the temple in the post-captivity state, but to the glorious renovation, the times of restitution of all things, spoken of by all the holy prophets since the world began.

Here, as is known, the so-called Fathers fell into the most serious error, even such as looked for the return of the Lord and His future kingdom over the earth. But not one of them, as far as I remember (and my friend Dr. D. Brown has proved the point well), bore witness to the future national restoration of Israel to the promised land. They on the contrary embraced the further error of supposing that the risen saints would be in the earthly Jerusalem: thus ignorantly were the best of them agreeing to blot out the distinctive hopes of both Israel and the church; and so rapid was the departure of the early Christians even from plain prophetic facts. Still earlier had they lost sight of our heavenly relations to Christ, and of the capital truth of the Spirit's presence and action in the assembly here below. The consequence was that then was consummated the fatal scheme of treating the church systematically as Israel improved. Maintain simply and firmly the literal restoration of Israel as wholly distinct from Christianity, and you have a bulwark against pseudo-spiritualism, and a groundwork, if rightly used, for seeing our special and heavenly privileges. The Fathers thought that Jerusalem during the millennium would be the city of the heavenly saints, that the Jews would be Christians, and that all would be together, risen and uprisen, reigning in glory. Can one wonder that men such as Dr. B. should set themselves against so incongruous a mixture of things heavenly and earthly? Nevertheless there is no good reason to deny, as he does, that Christ's advent precedes the millennium, any more than to explain away the restoration of Israel to their land according to prophecy and Romans 11:1-36, as his friend Dr. Fairbairn does.

Scripture reveals both headed up under Christ (Ephesians 1:10), the heavenly part distinct from the earthly, the glorified saints in the one, the Jews and Gentiles in the other, and all under the Lord Jesus, the risen Bridegroom of the church. It is a serious error to mix them up; is it less serious, because of the confusion of ignorant men, to deny the revealed truth as to either one or other? Let it be noticed further that in Ezekiel we see a temple as well as a city for the earthly people. It is remarkable, on the contrary, that in what is expressly said to be the bride, the Lamb's wife (that is, the church or heavenly city of which John speaks), no temple is seen. Thus the distinction is maintained even in glory. Where a temple is on earth, a priesthood accompanies it; and if there be a priesthood, it is hard to see the use of it without sacrifices. With us spiritual priesthood and spiritual sacrifices go together. (Compare Hebrews 10:1-39; Hebrews 11:1-40; Hebrews 12:1-29; Hebrews 13:1-25; and1 Peter 2:5; 1 Peter 2:5.) Nor does scripture leave it to inferential reasoning whether there be Aaronic priests, offerings, and sacrifices or not; for this is affirmed and even minutely described. (Compare Psalms 96:8; Psalms 115:10; Psalms 118:26-27; Psalms 132:13-18; Psalms 135:19-21; Isaiah 60:6-7; Isaiah 60:13; Isaiah 66:21; Jeremiah 33:18; Ezekiel 43:1-27; Ezekiel 44:1-31; Ezekiel 45:1-25; Ezekiel 46:1-24; Zechariah 14:16-21)

The chief source of difficulty and hindrance is the system which assumes that Christianity is a final condition for the earth, and that the testimony will be as now until all the earth is converted, the Jews being at length brought in among the rest. It is another thing with those who believe that there is another age to follow the present, characterized by the salvation of all Israel as such, with the Gentiles largely blessed also, but not brought into the one body as we know now, but the Jews in their own land with the temple and its ritual and all the nations not only coming up there year by year, but having worship each in his own place also by the will of God. When the national restoration of the ancient people is seen, it is hard after this to deny their priests and sanctuary, their incense, and sacrifices. Further we learn that just as certain changes came in with the temple of Solomon, so will it be yet more conspicuously in the future day. Absolute silence as to Pentecost; but we see Tabernacles observed with special prominence, when the nations go up to worship Jehovah. Nobody need be afraid that all this will interfere with the value due to the sacrifice of Christ: we may trust God and His word that no dishonour shall be done to that only efficacious atonement. I presume that the sacrifices will be of a purely memorial character and nothing more. In that day no Israelite will ever again use the form to slight the substance. All will know that there is nothing efficacious in such sacrifices, any more than we acknowledge in baptism or the Lord's Supper. So with the Israel of that day. That they are to have sacrifices is a revealed fact; so they are to have priests over again on earth. It is well to see that this will not for them interfere with their resting on Christ; but, understanding it or not, we should believe, and not seek to explain it away. The saints since redemption will be above, as also the Old Testament saints, then risen from the dead; but on the earth will be the converted Israel of that day in their unchanged bodies, and the spared Gentiles, not possessed of exactly the same privileges, for Israel will then have the better place, but all blessed richly under Jehovah Messiah. As it is quite a different state of things from Christianity, so there will then be two distinct positions, heavenly and earthly, instead of one and the same as now.

As to the details of the future sacrifices of Israel, one could not expect them given everywhere. It is enough that God has been pleased to give the particulars in one clearly defined prediction. And whatever may be thought of obscurity elsewhere, it is impossible to say that Ezekiel 43:18, Ezekiel 44:15, Ezekiel 45:15-25, Ezekiel 46:1-24 leave any question as to shedding blood sacrificially and offering victims on the altar of Jehovah. The Popish application ofMalachi 1:10; Malachi 1:10, I may remark in addition to what has been already said, is a striking proof of the evil of the so-called "spiritualizing" of scripture. They draw the mass from it, as is well known, construing the pure offering of the wafer changed into Christ's body. This would be without force, but for the error prevalent among Protestants that it is here a question of the church, an error derived from the Fathers. In this as in other things the Papists simply took up the mistakes of the early writers, and worked them into a still more fatal system; while Protestants have but partially cleared themselves from that general and early declension, and in no way serve as a testimony to the authority of the word or the power of the Spirit.

"But ye have profaned it, in that ye say, The table of Jehovah is polluted." Thus Jehovah resumes His expostulation, after having brought in the bright promise of millennial worship among the Gentiles. "Ye said also, Behold, what a weariness is it! and ye have snuffed at it, saith Jehovah of hosts; and ye brought that which was torn, and the lame, and the sick; thus ye brought an offering: should I accept this of your hand? saith Jehovah. But cursed be the deceiver, which hath in his flock a male, and voweth, and sacrificeth unto Jehovah a corrupt thing: for I am a great King, saith Jehovah of hosts, and my name is dreadful among the heathen."

This leads to further appeals, and still with the priests more particularly in view. "Like people, like priests:" if the people were bad, the priests were worse, as must usually be the case. "And now, O ye priests, lay it to heart." It was not only that they acted wrongly, but where was their conscience? "Behold, I will corrupt your seed, and spread dung upon your faces, even the dung of your solemn feasts; and one shall take you away with it." Jehovah proceeds to speak with the greatest contempt of the state to which He would reduce them as a chastening on their unfaithfulness. "And ye shall know that I have sent this commandment unto you, that my covenant might be with Levi, saith Jehovah of hosts." Levi is purposely introduced, because of his faithfulness at the crisis of the golden calf, in striking contrast with the conduct of him who ought to have been the most careful of Jehovah's glory, even Aaron the high priest "My covenant was with him of life and peace; and I gave them to him for the fear wherewith he feared me, and was afraid before my name." Jehovah looks back to the time when Levi consecrated his service at the cost of every human consideration, in not less striking contrast with once bitter revenge for his outraged sister. Here again we see how habitually the Lord goes, as in Malachi 1:1-14, to the source of things. So He took up Esau and Jacob at the beginning, and judges at the end. He pronounces on Levi and the priests. "The law of truth was in his mouth, and iniquity was not found in his lips: he walked with me in peace and equity, and did turn many away from iniquity. For the priest's lips should keep knowledge, and they should seek the law at his mouth: for he is the messenger of Jehovah of hosts." Then comes His solemn estimate: "But ye are departed out of the way; ye have caused many to stumble at the law; ye have corrupted the covenant of Levi, saith Jehovah of hosts. Therefore have I also made you contemptible and base before all the people, according as ye have not kept my ways, but have been partial in the law."

As thus the sanctuary was polluted, and its ministers, and the offerings, so further we shall see the social life of Israel suffered no less. There is the deepest connection between a false religion, or a non-religion, and the practical ways of the people. "Have we not all one father? hath not one God created us? why do we deal treacherously every man against his brother, by profaning the covenant of our fathers? Judah hath dealt treacherously, and an abomination is committed in Israel and in Jerusalem; for Judah hath profaned the holiness of Jehovah which he loved, and hath married the daughter of a strange god." Thus, though not idolators, they had contracted the nearest relationship in life with the heathen. "Jehovah will cut off, the man that doeth this, the master and the scholar, out of the tabernacles of Jacob, and him that offereth an offering unto Jehovah of hosts. And this have ye done again, covering the altar of Jehovah with tears, with weeping, and with crying out, insomuch that he regardeth not the offering any more, or receiveth it with good will at your hand." The prophet describes the weeping of the Jewish wives, now repudiated for the sake of the heathen they chose. It is the same state of things in Ezra, and especially Nehemiah. The heart of the people was sick as truly, yea, much more sick than in the earlier days when Isaiah laid it to their charge.

Nor was the moral insensibility less now but more. "Yet ye say, Wherefore?" They could not see wherein they were to blame. "Because Jehovah hath been witness between thee and the wife of thy youth, against whom thou hast dealt treacherously: yet is she thy companion, and the wife of thy covenant." They were both placed on a common footing with God. "And did not he make one? Yet had he the residue of the spirit. And wherefore one? That he might seek a godly seed. Therefore take heed to your spirit, and let none deal treacherously against the wife of his youth. For Jehovah, the God of Israel, saith he hateth putting away." What alienation from God's mind and ways! They were given up to self. Their light spirit in divorce was now reaching its head among the Jews in the remnant. "For one covereth violence with his garment, saith Jehovah of hosts: therefore take heed to your spirit, that ye deal not treacherously."

Thus, as the first chapter looks more at their religious life, the second, at least the latter part of it, takes in their social life; and in both we see total ruin and hardness of heart before God. Nevertheless it is well to observe how He connects together both elements, the social and religious. He begins with the root of it. If the soul is wrong towards God, there is not much hope for man, even in the closest relationships of this life.

Then we come to Malachi 3:1-18 which runs on really to the end, the third and fourth forming one strain of which the fourth is more a division than a separate chapter; and so it stands in the Hebrew. We find now the introduction of that which introduces the day of Jehovah in the last verse of Malachi 2:1-17, which, it seems, should rather be the first of chapter 3. "Ye have wearied Jehovah with your words; yet ye say, Wherein have we wearied him? When ye say, Every one that doeth evil is good in the sight of Jehovah, and he delighteth in them; or, Where is the God of judgment?" Did any thus complain that evil prospered? The answer follows: "Behold, I send my messenger." It is rather the introduction that we see here. "And he shall prepare the way before me: and the Lord, whom ye seek, shall suddenly come to his temple." There is more than a messenger now; it is Messiah Himself, "even the messenger of the covenant, whom ye delight in: behold, he shall come, saith Jehovah of hosts. But who may abide the day of his coming? and who shall stand when he appeareth? for he is like a refiner's fire, and like fullers' soap: and he shall sit as a refiner and purifier of silver: and he shall purify the sons of Levi" (beginning with what most needed it, and what was nearest to the Lord), "and purge them as gold and silver, that they may offer them unto Jehovah an offering in righteousness. Then shall the offering of Judah and Jerusalem be pleasant unto Jehovah, as in the days of old, and as in former years. And I will come near to you to judgment." Here is the challenge ofMalachi 2:17; Malachi 2:17 taken up by the God of judgment. The blessing of Jehovah is bound up with the judgment of Jehovah. It is a totally different thing from the gospel. Christianity shows us Christ bearing our judgment, and consequently brings in perfect grace towards the believer, except only that, being thus received on the ground of grace, he becomes a subject of the government of God in his earthly life of every day. Hence arises the need for patience on God's part, and growth on man's part, with watchfulness, prayer, self-judgment and the Father's chastening, as well as above all the priesthood of Christ. But this supposes a soul resting on righteousness: Christ is made unto him righteousness. Then he has to walk accordingly; and this is carried on under the moral government of God. But it is a different thing from what we have here, where public power accompanies righteousness.

John the Baptist, as we know, was an accomplishment of the messenger in the past; Elijah the prophet seems to be the one who will make it good in the day that is coming. Why should we reason on these things? Let us receive the word of God with simplicity. We are fertile in difficulties. Our minds easily find hindrances in the way, and plenty of reasons not to believe what is revealed. Yet I think it plain that Elijah as a prophet is to be sent, but not before the Lord comes for us. Man makes a great mistake in confounding grace and judgment, the present with the future. Here it is in view of coming to judgment. Now the Lord has brought in grace, and He will finish its testimony and its dealings before He brings in judgment. The coming of the Lord in grace is the complement of the work, of grace. He will fulfil His new work with its eternal consequences. Then will come another age.

I should thinkMalachi 3:1-18; Malachi 3:1-18 was fulfilled at that time, but that, being so very like what Elijah will do by and by, it is put in this general way. Then the Spirit of Jehovah by Malachi would still present to Israel the Lord's coming to them. One fully allows a partial accomplishment of Malachi both in John the Baptist and in Christ's coming to the temple (chap. 3); while it is evident when we come to the fourth chapter that it is exclusively the future. The third chapter touches partially on the past; but we can see that we are constantly arrested that the first coming of Christ did not bring out all that is said even here. "And then shall the offering of Judah and Jerusalem be pleasant unto Jehovah as in the days of old and as in former years." It is well known how far this was from fact. Consequently what follows far exceeds anything then realized in the judging of all wickedness among them. "And I will come near to you to Judgment, and I will be a swift witness against the sorcerers, and against the adulterers, and against false swearers, and against those that oppress the hireling in his wages, the widow, and the fatherless, and that turn aside the stranger from his right, and fear not me, saith Jehovah of hosts. For I am Jehovah, I change not; therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed. Even from the days of your fathers ye are gone away from mine ordinances, and have not kept them."

Then the call to return met with an unreasonable and rebellious reply: "Wherein shall we return? Will a man rob God? Yet ye have robbed me. But ye say, Wherein have we robbed thee? In tithes and offerings." Jehovah takes them on the lowest possible ground. "Ye are cursed with a curse: for ye have robbed me, even this whole nation, Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in mine house, and prove me now herewith, saith Jehovah of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it. And I will rebuke the devourer for your sakes, and he shall not destroy the fruits of your ground; neither shall your vine cast her fruit before the time in the field, saith Jehovah of hosts. And all nations shall call you blessed." Such will be the case in the millennium: they will prove the Lord thus. They will humble themselves; they will trust Him; and all nations shall call them blessed. "For ye shall be a delightsome land" which they have never been since this was written. On the contrary, "Your words have been stout against me, saith Jehovah. Yet ye say, What have we spoken so much against thee? Ye have said, It is vain to serve God: and what profit is it that we have kept his ordinance, and that we have walked mournfully before Jehovah of hosts? And now we call the proud happy; yea, they that work wickedness are set up; yea, they that tempt God are even delivered."

But then the wickedness of the people in general was used of God for rousing the conscience of some in their midst. Among the returned remnant there was a godly portion. "Then* they that feared Jehovah spake often one to another: and Jehovah hearkened, and heard it, and a book of remembrance was written." It is plain that we have the spirit of this verified when Christ came. We see the Annas, the Simeons, and the shepherds, who show us exactly this state of spiritual feeling. They could and did communicate with all those who looked for redemption in Jerusalem. And what was known then will be true again in a still more manifest way before the Lord comes and brings in the great and dreadful day of Jehovah.

*Venema takes verse 16 in contrast with the preceding verse, as the pious of old set thus off against the evil ways of the present generation. Hence the particles of time are taken in opposition. This, I confess, is to me more than doubtful; for the sense conveyed in the English Bible, which is that of other versions I have examined, seems preferable.

"And they shall be mine, saith Jehovah of hosts, in that day when I make up my jewels; and I will spare them, as a man spareth his own son that serveth him. Then shall ye return, and discern between the righteous and the wicked, between him that serveth God and him that serveth him not." The Jews themselves will no longer take the ground of being mere Jews. They will see the vanity of an outward place; they will value what is of God; they will abhor the more those who are wicked because they are Jews. The transgressors are to be made an abhorring to all flesh by the judgment of God in Jerusalem, as we find in the end of Isaiah 66:1-24; but here we find the discerning of it even before that judgment is accomplished. The heart of the righteous will be brought to feel the nature of what Jehovah will do when judgment comes.

"For, behold, the day cometh that shall burn as an oven; and all the proud, yea, and all that do wickedly, shall be stubble." What matters where pride and wickedness may be? It is everywhere hateful to God, whether among Jews or Gentiles. It is even, if possible, more heinous among the Jews. "And the day that cometh shall burn them up, saith Jehovah of hosts, that it shall leave them neither root nor branch. But unto you that fear my name shall the Sun of righteousness arise with healing in his wings." This is not the morning star, which is rather the way in which we know Jesus, and look for Him. The morning star is as decidedly for those who during the night look up into the heavens, as the Sun of righteousness causes His force to be felt in calling man to be occupied with his work here below. It is the sun that rules the day. Be it that the day of Jehovah is come; the Sun of righteousness rules it. You cannot avoid seeing sunlight unless you shut your eyes, and even then may have an instinctive sense of it. But with the morning star it is not so: you must look for it when others sleep. This is the way therefore in which the Spirit of God shows us our watching for Jesus. It is exclusively heavenly, and supposes faith, love, and hope in the power of the Holy Ghost.

There is more however to notice here. "But unto you that fear my name shall the Sun of righteousness arise with healing in his wings; and ye shall go forth and grow up as calves of the stall. And ye shall tread down the wicked." Here is a twofold issue mercy to the righteous, and judgment to the wicked. This is not at all applicable to Christianity, because every one is now judged by Christ's cross as wicked until they receive Jesus; and then, no matter what they may have been before, they are justified by faith and enter on an entirely new course. But there is no treading down the wicked yet, nor will it be at any time as long as Christianity goes on. It is wholly future, and will be when Jehovah takes up the Jews and judgment comes upon the world. "And ye shall tread down the wicked; for they shall be ashes under the soles of your feet in the day that I shall do this, saith Jehovah of hosts."

Next follow two points of interest. One is the remembrance of the law of Moses. They look back; and this is the test to judge their whole course from first to last. Again they will look forward: "Behold I send you Elijah the prophet." Thus, though about Israel, it shows us the two ways of judging aright the present in the light of the past, and in that of the future. It always therefore requires faith to judge according to God. Hence Malachi brings in morally the giver of the law and the restorer of the law, the two great pillars of the Jewish nation, heralding the way before Jehovah who alone can bestow and sustain the blessing.

"And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse." Such is the warning note given here by Him who is the best blessing He can bestow. Heaven and earth and all things shall be shaken, but Jehovah abides; and blessed are all they that put their trust in Him. We know that the restoring of all things morally will be wrought in the hearts of fathers and sons in Israel, and that God will make them as life from the dead to the world, and thus spread His saving health among all nations who shall be blessed, not cursed, in the Seed of promise.

In the spirit and power of Elijah came Jehovah's messenger, John the Baptist, and many of the sons of Israel did he turn to Jehovah their God. The language seems expressly to guard against the error of supposing that it was the predicted mission of Elijah the prophet. If ye will receive it, said our Lord Himself, this is Elijah who should come. It was a testimony to faith, not the fulfilment of the terms of Malachi's last intimation. (Malachi 4:1-6) Even in our Lord's own case all . that was bright and manifest blessing for Israel was arrested by the unbelief of the people, and thus the door was opened on His rejection to heavenly blessings for all believers indiscriminately. Hence for the time the moral restitution of the Jews was partial; and (the mass being impenitent, and family bonds utterly relaxed and broken) the land was smitten with a curse from that day to this. But it will not be always thus. For grace will work in a remnant once more in the last days when the full accomplishment of Elijah's mission shall be realized (Matthew 17:11), and, the apostates perishing under divine judgment, all Israel shall be saved to the joy and blessing of the earth and of all its families. And such is the common voice of the holy prophets since the world began.

We have now in the goodness of God followed the course of the lesser prophets from beginning to end. We have glanced at themselves and briefly compared them with each other. How solemn for the believer to see the same ominous sign of sure coming judgment in Christendom as we may have discerned throughout the course of Israel, The possession of much truth no more guarantees now than then that we are true witnesses for God in our own day; still less the assumption that we have a position according to God because we are in a certain historical line of succession. So thought those who broke the law, rejected the prophets, slew the Messiah, and refused the fresh testimony of the Holy Spirit. Let us beware of making the same fatal mistake, and rather examine whether we are walking in the distinctive truth God has revealed to us for His own glory in Christ, not merely in truths, however momentous, which do not so much put conscience to the proof. The unity of the Godhead was perverted by the Jews to the dishonour of the Son; the Son as He was on earth under law is now abused in Christendom to ignore redemption, union with Him on high, the presence of the Spirit in the assembly of God here below, and the constant hope of Christ's coming. These are the truths which try the ground of the heart in the Christian. May we be found faithful and strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus!