The Book of Malachi: Expository Commentary from Sermons by Dr Peter Masters

Bible Commentary on Malachi

by Dr Peter Masters, Metropolitan Tabernacle, London (adapted from sermons)

The Book of the Prophet Malachi is the last of the minor prophets in our Old Testament canon. We tend to find the minor prophets negative and repetitive and, though no Christian person would articulate such a thing, some find them complex and difficult. Sometimes they are even viewed as disordered, chaotic in their content which is of course a great mistake, because they are carefully and logically set out with a well-ordered structure. It is not surprising Malachi would be the last prophet in the Old Testament. Some people say that Joel was actually written after Malachi but most agree that Malachi is the rear-guard book. He is the last to write, and he closes the period of Old Testament revelation.

There has also been a dispute about whether Malachi was actually his name. The word translated Malachi actually means ‘my messenger’ and that is a term which is often found in the prophetic books of the Old Testament. For this reason some say he is simply announcing himself as ‘my messenger’, and that Malachi was not his actual name. Calvin thought it was Ezra writing under this title. But the majority of commentators in olden times always said, 'Well as every other prophet is named, it would be very strange to find one that wasn't.' So we assume that Malachi was his name, which incidentally is another clue to his background. Would anyone have given him the name ‘my messenger’ unless he was of priestly descent, or unless he was the child of a prophet who had received some word from the Lord that his son, in turn, would be a prophet? It is pure speculation, but probably it was the name that he had from birth.

He writes after many of the previous prophecies have been fulfilled. The children of Israel had been taken into captivity in Babylon. Then the Babylonian Empire had been overthrown by the Medes and the Persians, and Cyrus the Mede had set the Jews free, and up to 50,000 of them – a remnant of them, but not a large remnant – had returned and they had rebuilt the temple. They laid the footings, and then they stopped the work, and for some 18 years they didn't lift a tool, or do anything in the work. That was because of various discouragements and probably selfish ends; they wanted to make a good job of their own houses. That is one of the complaints that different prophets made against them. They feathered their nests, and they built for themselves what they hoped would be a prosperous society. It didn't work out, because the Lord withheld blessing on their harvests and there were always shortages and difficulties, but they didn't get it. They didn't get the point or the discipline that was being meted out to them. And really it was left for some time when prophets were raised up to bring about the resumption of building. And we have been studying those prophets also: Haggai and Zechariah. And they urged and exhorted the people to get back to work and they were successful. The people would respond, at least outwardly. They didn't seem to have – most of them – any deep inner spiritual life, but they could be roused up to some form of patriotism as a nation and get on. So in 516 BC the temple was completed.

After that there was another decline, and after 60 years the Lord raised up and sent the prophet Ezra. In 458 BC he had been sent by Artaxerxes to Jerusalem to set about reforms among the Jews. Some 16 years after the work of Ezra came Nehemiah, who was perhaps the most highly placed civil servant in the Persian Empire, but a Jew. He had been allowed by Artaxerxes the Persian king to return to Jerusalem and be the governor of the city and to order affairs and he had done so and there had been great reformation and the walls of the city were built up during his time. He had returned to King Artaxerxes, the Persian Emperor, and he was away for some time and then he had returned again to Jerusalem. and he was so sad because when he came back to Jerusalem he found all his reforms had fallen apart. The people were no longer observing the Sabbath, the priests were utterly corrupt, and all the offerings defiled. The people had divorced their own wives and married idolaters, non-Jewish idolaters, active idolaters, and they had completely abandoned all the tithes and the offerings. That was the tragic state of affairs that Nehemiah found. It was at that time that Malachi was ministering, at the same time as Nehemiah, and afterwards, and it is he therefore who is used of God to give this final warning to the Jews, and to pronounce over the Jews the sentence of death as it were: that the Jewish era and the Jewish ‘church’ would end, though a remnant would be saved. That is the wonderful promise throughout the Bible: that it would be a judgement, but it would not be a final judgement because some would be saved and purified, and that is what this book is all about. Generally speaking, it has been held to have been written after 445 BC and about 430 BC. So here is the final prophecy, God's last messenger to that Old Testament period, before the intertestamental period, during which there were no great works of God, no prophets raised up, until another prophet arose: John the Baptist, the forerunner of Christ.

Malachi’s style is conversational, although conversational is not quite the right word, because it is very severe in places. But it is conversational in the sense that he has this literary style: he puts words into the mouths of the people who he is preaching to. 'You say;' he writes, 'this is your point of view', and he states it as if they were stating those views. Then he knocks it down and gives God's response. That is his style, and it is unusual in the Old Testament, but interestingly the experts tell us it became the leading style among Jewish preachers in subsequent centuries. Even those who did not follow the message of Malachi pinched his method given under the inspiration of the Spirit of God, and so there are a series of protests on the part of the Jews, the priests, where they are as it were interrupting Malachi, but actually it is he that is doing it. ‘You say this’, ‘you say that’, and then he answers off their own position and their own complaint. Sometimes he puts words into their mouths that they would never have said, and it is almost an exaggeration of their point of view, but actually, though they might not have said it, it was exactly what they thought, and so Malachi puts his finger on the crucial point time after time.

The book falls into roughly six sections. The first section deals with the state of the people spiritually, the people of Jerusalem and the surrounding area. It deals with the unawareness of the people. They seem to be unaware of their calling, and unaware of their distinctiveness and their blessings.

The second section is the condemnation of the priests. They were as bad as anyone and there is a special and distinctive condemnation for them. Each of these sections is accompanied by prophecy, and the prophecy for the priests is that the priesthood is coming to an end, and in the time of Christ it will be replaced by another priesthood, a priesthood of all believers, a godly priesthood.

Then the third section is the charge against the people of treachery, and that's a very strong charge, and the leading example of it is their shocking conduct in marriage: marrying pagan wives and discarding their original wives. This in its turn is an illustration of their spiritual faithlessness.

The fourth section answers the people’s complaint about the justice of God and includes a great prophecy of Christ and his coming and what he will do, and not only his accomplishments, but the troubles it will cause.

A fifth section is about consecration. It homes in on the abandonment of all the tithes and offerings. This is the generation that has been delivered from the Persian Empire, bought back to Jerusalem, the temple rebuilt, preserved and kept. Nevertheless they are so remiss and so far from God that they abandon all tithes and offerings, and the offering of their hearts and their lives: it is about lack of consecration.

The final section points to the eternal destiny of the saved and the eternal destiny of the lost.

So when you look at Malachi, don't think that it's a great box of confused ideas, observations, sentiments, prophecies, that tumble out with a sort of random character to it. It is very systematic, and it follows these six sections. In every one of them, there is the same structure, roughly. First of all a charge is brought against the people: ‘This is what is wrong with you.’ Then he puts words into the mouths of the people, and he makes them respond: ‘How have we done that? Tell us precisely. We don't consider we have done that.’ Malachi, who is the mouthpiece of God, then proves the charge made against them and tells them in exactly what way they are guilty, and what God will do about it, and how things are going to be so different in the new church when Christ comes. Each section that follows that same pattern. So it is a book of great order; it is very systematic.