Matthew 5: 17-20
“Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. Therefore anyone who sets aside one of the least of these commands and teaches others accordingly will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.
Introduction
Lord Tennyson wrote these lines about reverence towards God: “I would the great world grew like thee: who growest not alone in power and knowledge, but by year and hour in reverence and charity.” Reverence is not merely a thing of words, it is an attitude of the soul which enables the whole of life and of conduct. This reminded me of a story I heard about reverence. It said “it was reverence, reverence for himself, for his work, for the Divine Presence, which by Michalangelo, when a friend chided him for paying so much attention to the hair of a statue, on the plea that it would be so high up that not one would see it. Michaelangelo answered “yes, but God will see it!” It is for us to revere God and honor Him on a daily basis.
This was something that God’s people were having a troublesome time with in the days of Malachi. This is the last of our study of the minor prophets, at least for now. As I’ve mentioned, these small chapters at the end of the Old Testament are not very long, but their message is very strong. Malachi’s place in the Bible is at the very end of the Old Testament. Some Biblical scholars place some of the writings of the Old Testament, such as Ezra and Chronicles during the time period between the Testaments, but it is clear to us that no matter if these writings were put down after the book of Malachi, these were the last prophetic messages that God allowed to His people before the years of silence.
Can you imagine what God’s chosen people must have thought when they realized that God was not sending prophets to them? I personally believe that they went back and looked at these words that we can read in this chapter. Can you imagine the silence? It’s hard to think that these people had gotten so far from God, had gotten so arrogant about the way they approached the creator of everything that God was silent to them. But as we will learn from this book, there was a great deal of dishonor going on, even by those who were supposed to be leading God’s people back to Him.
Dishonoring God
Some have said that Malachi was a prophet who taught and spoke out in the open. This book is unlike any other within the Old Testament concerning prophets because, as one commentary put it, he launches into arguments with his contemporaries. We can hear in the text the way that the crowd responds to his talking, and how Malachi deftly takes each objection and excuse that they give to him for what they are doing to dishonor God and how, even though God is a God of patience, of divine love, and faithfulness, they were running out of time to repent. But what were the people doing to dishonor God so much?
First, the priests were misleading the people. Unfortunately, I have seen all too often preachers in this day and age who will put their own selfish needs before the health of their congregation to gain for themselves rather than for the whole. We see preachers that want you to send them your money so "you'll not sin with it". Well, you won't because they'll do it for you! They pay for their entourage, their posse. Now,, I'm no better than they are, I'm a sinner fallen short of glory and am only saved through grace,, but I have a posse of three: the father, the son, and the Holy Spirit! That's all we ever need.
These priests were allowing for impure animals to be sacrificed on the altar of God. We know that there were rules and regulations for this sacrifice to God. All the way back to Cain and Able, God was dishonored by impure sacrifices to Him. Look at Malachi 1:6-8. It says ““A son honors his father, and a slave his master. If I am a father, where is the honor due me? If I am a master, where is the respect due me?” says the Lord Almighty. “It is you priests who show contempt for my name. “But you ask, ‘How have we shown contempt for your name?’ “By offering defiled food on my altar. “But you ask, ‘How have we defiled you?’ “By saying that the Lord’s table is contemptible. When you offer blind animals for sacrifice, is that not wrong? When you sacrifice lame or diseased animals, is that not wrong? Try offering them to your governor! Would he be pleased with you? Would he accept you?” says the Lord Almighty.
Now imagine if you were to come to church today and instead of truly worshipping God, you just came to talk to your friends, you passed notes all through church, you made sure to not pay attention intentionally to anything I or anyone else was saying. You didn’t even sing the songs in your head. It was just something you had to do.. You just went out of your way to make yourself obnoxious to God. You know, we may think to ourselves, well, I’ve never done that. But I know in my life that I’ve been insincere with my worship. Insincerity in worship is an insult to God. God says later in this chapter “Oh, that one of you would shut the temple doors, so that you would not light useless fires on my altar!” and even later “you profane it by saying ‘The Lord’s table is defiled, and its food is contemptible. And you say, ‘What a burden!’ and you sniff at it contemptuously.” It is a calling out by God that he is more than displeased.
Imagine one more time that someone came into this building and spray painted terrible things on the walls of the church. Tore up the pews. Stole the sound system or the copper in the air conditioners. Just made a wreck of the place. That would be awful, wouldn’t it? But if we come to church and we are not preparing ourselves to worship God, we are doing the same thing to God even if it's not showing on the outside. And if those who are especially in leadership positions within the church, especially pastors, who don’t come to the Lord prepared to worship Him, there are dire warnings that Malachi gives to them. When God’s priests turned away from Him, Malachi writes in chapter 2, verse 9 that “I have caused you to be despised and humiliated before all the people, because you have not followed my ways but have shown partiality in matters of the law.” I fully believe that those preachers who are leading their flocks astray will be ridiculed and humiliated. How many of these preachers do we hear of that end up being found out? Well, the ones of Jesus’ day were certainly found out, weren’t they? Jesus did ridicule them for missing the Son of Man right before their own eyes! And ultimately, they were humiliated before God when Christ came to earth.
The Coming Messiah
Because of the way that all of mankind has dishonored God, God knew in his infinite glory that we would need a savior. Look in chapter 4, verses 1-3. God’s word says “Surely the day is coming; it will burn like a furnace. All the arrogant and every evildoer will be stubble, and the day that is coming will set them on fire,” says the Lord Almighty. “Not a root or a branch will be left to them. But for you who revere my name, the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its rays. And you will go out and frolic like well-fed calves. Then you will trample on the wicked; they will be ashes under the soles of your feet on the day when I act,” says the Lord Almighty. This statement here, like most Biblical scholars, I feel is talking about the coming of Christ. The sun of righteousness, spelled here as S-U-N, really refers to the son, S-O-N, does it not? God was promising a coming kingdom very soon to His people.
Jesus himself had some things to say about the righteousness of people. In Matthew 5:20, Jesus says “For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” Now, you might be wondering what direction I’m going in with this verse here. Certainly we see a bit of connection with what I’ve said above, that those preachers and teachers who were more concerned with themselves would be ridiculed and shamed. But even more than this, just before this verse, Jesus was stating that he had come to fulfill the Law and the Prophets. What the Pharisees were pushing was a strict adherence to the Law, and that if you did anything to break it, you would be subject to the utmost punishment. **These Pharisees were extremely careful about keeping the Law of Moses, so extreme, in fact, that they had added details, rules, regulations, and even other ‘laws’ on TOP of the Law so that they’d never come close to breaking it. Have you ever seen a child that was told to stay away from the edge of something, and they back up six feet from it instead? That’s what the Pharisees were like. But beyond this, the Pharisees were strict with their students as well. If you stepped one toe out of line, you were unrighteous!
What Jesus was doing here is the same as what Malachi was trying to accomplish in his day. Jesus had shown that the righteousness of the Pharisees was false, just as Malachi had shown that the priest’s offerings were false to God. All of these supposed holy people were guilty of showing irreverence towards God. They were more interested in how things looked versus how their heart were for the Lord. As one person wrote, Jesus clashed with the Pharisees over the way they work so hard on outward appearances while sin decayed their hearts. But here is the important part of the coming kingdom of God, both in Malachi’s time, and in our time of waiting for Christ to return: God cares far more about what is in a person’s heart than how other people perceive them. God truly values true purity motivated by true love more than technical rule-keeping motivated by spiritual pride. The people of Malachi’s day were involved in keeping up the appearance of giving sacrifices to God, no matter if they were pure or not. The sacrifices were not, and because of their arrogance, God wanted nothing to do with them. And in the same way, the Pharisees were hung up on all of these rules and regulations that were supposed to keep them pure and holy that they completely missed the Messiah right in front of them. The true righteousness of the coming kingdom of Christ is not in the ways that we keep righteous, but it can only be accomplished through true devotion to Christ only.
Jesus makes one more point in this verse, and I think that Malachi would have supported this. Even though we can try to be righteous, nobody can be truly, perfectly righteous. No person can live a life of moral purity worthy of heaven. Romans 3:23 reminds us that “for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” But here is the key: we are justified through the gift of grace, through the redemption of Jesus Christ. Jesus gave us a choice, just like God gave a choice to His own people: turn to me, and I will save you. God says in Malachi 1:14 “For I am a great king, and my name is to be feared among the nations.” God will be honored by all nations of people when Jesus returns. But we are to know that if we put our trust in Christ, and truly and fully live our lives for Him, that we will be saved. There are two final verses for us to look at that will give us comfort, and it comes from Malachi 3:17 and 18. God’s word says “On the day when I act, they will be my treasured possession. I will spare them, just as a father has compassion and spares his son who serves him. And you will again see the distinction between the righteous and the wicked, between those who serve God and those who do not.” Even though Christ served his father well, God did not spare his son the punishment that we deserve. Christ was the perfect sacrifice, not blemished, no spots, and completely sinless. But he took the complete blunt of that death blow meant for us so that we could be saved. And through that, we will be the treasured possession of God.
Conclusion
In Romans 10:4, Paul wrote “Christ is the culmination of the law so that there may be righteousness for everyone who believes.” I read a story once of a man who had been downtrodden, hurt and in pain from life’s great troubles. His friend was a Christian, and read to him John 14:1, which of course is let not your heart be troubled, you believe in God, believe also in me. This broken man interrupted his friend, saying “Yes, if he was God he had a right to say that. But if he was a man, he knew no more about it than anyone else.” How sad to think that way. If Christ is only a superman, only a ‘good’ man, and not the eternal Son of the Living God, then our hope for all of humanity has gone out in the darkness of despair.
When we believe, we are made righteous in the eyes of God, because Christ is the only way that we can be. God is righteous and does not approve of anything that is unrighteous. We cannot change the moral laws and expect God to forgive and accept that. We must never think God has given up on establishing righteousness in His world. We might not see the evidence of God’s work to see this righteousness, but we can be sure that He is just, loving and caring for us, and that is why He sent his son to us to save us. Christ’s righteousness is available to everyone who believes in Him. And it is only through Him that we can be truly saved from our own wicked ways. Let’s pray.
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