Malachi 3:13 - 4:3
The Proper Order

"Your words have been stout against me," says Yahweh. "Yet you say, 'What have we spoken against you?' You have said, 'It is vain to serve God;' and 'What profit is it that we have followed his instructions, and that we have walked mournfully before Yahweh of Armies? Now we call the proud happy; yes, those who work wickedness are built up; yes, they tempt God, and escape.' Then those who feared Yahweh spoke one with another; and Yahweh listened, and heard, and a book of memory was written before him, for those who feared Yahweh, and who honored his name. They shall be mine," says Yahweh of Armies, "my own possession in the day that I make, and I will spare them, as a man spares his own son who serves him. Then you shall return and discern between the righteous and the wicked, between him who serves God and him who doesn't serve him.

"For, behold, the day comes, it burns as a furnace; and all the proud, and all who work wickedness, will be stubble; and the day that comes will burn them up," says Yahweh of Armies, "that it shall leave them neither root nor branch. But to you who fear my name shall the sun of righteousness arise with healing in its wings. You will go out, and leap like calves of the stall. You shall tread down the wicked; for they will be ashes under the soles of your feet in the day that I make," says Yahweh of Armies.

World English Bible

In so much of the Old Testament, we often see the faithful followers of God in the minority, working to convince other Israelites to stop worshipping Baal or Ashtoreth. No matter how many times God's prophets demonstrated that God is the only true god, many of the rulers and people continued to worship whichever gods pleased them. We sometimes come to the conclusion that the fall of the Northern and Southern Kingdoms and the Exile into Babylon were God's responses to this pervasive sin of idolatry. The religious leaders of Jesus' day went further, wanting to make sure the people never again strayed, whether into idolatry or into violation of any of the rest of the Commandments.

But Malachi writes for us that God saw these sins differently. Yes, there obviously was worship of multiple pagan gods in the land of Judah, but God's word to Malachi was more concerned with why the people chose to recognize multiple gods than it was with the specific sin of idolatry. The answer to that question sounds quite modern.

The sinful people's response to the worship of God was, in short, "what's in it for me?"

One strong enticement of these pagan gods was the opportunity for humanity to influence and modify the god's behavior. Some rituals performed for certain gods were to produce good crops, other rituals were to have many children, especially male offspring. Other rituals would grant victory in battle. It seemed simple for a chieftain to achieve whatever he wanted, if he just made the right offerings to the right gods, so he could be sure the gods worked for him.

So, in that culture, if one god wasn't working for a person, they might try another. In our culture, we mostly are too intelligent to put our trust in pagan deities. However, we do put our trust in investment opportunities, self-help gurus, fad diet and exercise programs, and a usually overblown faith in our ability to be anything we want to be. It is as easy for us to dismiss God from our life as it was in Malachi's day if we feel that religion "just isn't working for us."

Malachi draws an eternally important contrast between those who complain that God will not conform to humanity's wishes, and those who conform their will to the wishes of God. Furthermore, the contrast is between those who demand that God act in their time, and those who are obedient in waiting until God's time.

God promises that those who wait for God's time will not be disappointed. The wonders that God promised these reverent followers surpassed anything requested by the impatient ones. God made it clear that it is not a question of God's power, or God's justice, or God's concern—but it is all about reverence for God, about getting the relationship between humanity and God in the proper order.