I read Malachi this morning and was thinking about what the prophet said to the Jews who had returned from exile and were just completed with the wall around Jerusalem and their new, smaller temple. They'd been making alliances with the people living around them. They'd taken the daughters of foreign gods for their sons to marry. The mothers of their grandchildren where teaching their children to worship the false gods. The priests and leaders were more apostate than the general population! How was Israel to be a light to the nations about the one true God if their priests were corrupt? Who would tell them that God loved all people and wanted a relationship with them? The Jews were being assimilated...becoming like everyone around them. Then, under Ezra's leadership they started becoming "people of the book" -- they decided to send back their foreign wives and their children. They had made some very difficult decisions in order to be the people of God. But would the reforms last?
It's really incredible that Malachi's words were the last words that the Jews recognized as God's word to them. There's lots of Jewish history written -- but none of the texts were considered Scripture. So what was God's last word to them?
The Lord had heard their questions:
How has the Lord loved us?
How have we shown contempt to the Lord's name?
Why doesn't the Lord pay attention to our sacrifices?
How have we wearied the Lord with our words?
How are we to return to the Lord?
How are we robbing God?
What harsh things have we said against the Lord?
They seemed clueless that their actions had totally offended the Lord. He said that he would send his messenger who would prepare the way for the Lord himself was going to come. The Lord would come into his temple, into Jerusalem, and he would be like a refiner and purifier of silver to purify the priests. "See, I will send you the prophet Elijah before that great and dreadful day of the Lord comes. He will turn the hearts of the fathers to their children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers; or else I will come and strike the land with a curse."
Silence...hundreds of years of silence.
Has the prophet Elijah come? Has the Lord come into his temple?
I think he has. What has he said? If the priests were getting it all wrong. If the people weren't listening to the prophets -- then the Lord himself was going to come. What did He have to say?
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3 comments:
Interesting thinking. What do you think about the fact that they sent back their foreign wives and children. Do you think that is what God wanted?
I think that God hates divorce. There's no question about that. Even in Malachi, after the prophet expresses his outrages that they are taking foreign wives, he also expresses God's outrage at divorce. And Paul makes it very clear that if you are married to a non-believer, you don't divorce for religious reasons. That said, I think that the marriages that were taking place in Israel 400BC had more to do with political alliances and gaining some financial or political security than anything else. These families who had sacrificed their grandchildren's faithfulness to God in order to get some alliance with someone from a foreign country had really messed up. Sending the wives and their children back to their fathers was a terribly drastic messure. I don't know what God thought of it. It was their decision in response to Ezra's grief. I have to reflect on whether I'm willing to take such drastic measures to ensure that my faithfulness to God isn't compromised. Am I willing to root out anything that is drawing my heart away?
Thanks for you thoughts. That has always been a hard passage for me. I don't like to hear about families split up and children loosing parents. Maybe it was a lot different in that culture. I don't know what I would be willing to do either to get rid of what wasn't right in my life in God's eyes.
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