1. "Bitterness is the corrosive residue that remains when injustice goes unanswered, be it real or perceived. You believe that something is owed to you, you don't get it, time passes, and bitterness ensues."

2. "Brothers and sisters, we underestimate God's love when we measure His love according to human standards, according to our circumstances, and when we measure our circumstances against our dreams. The way we will grasp His love best is not when we compare what He's done to what we dream for ourselves, but when we compare what He's done to what we deserve for ourselves."

3. "If God chose you because you had the foresight to choose him, then you've got something you can boast about. But if God chose you before you were even born, that drives us to humility."

4. "If you did absolutely nothing to deserve God's love, then you can't do anything to lose His love."

5. "Do not underestimate our ability to convince ourselves that we're honoring God where our attitude is anything but."

6. "The heinousness of our sin is not mainly the harm it does, but the lies it spews about God."

7. "We have a world that has an ethic which is basically rooted in whatever makes me happy. Many of us seek to move on from that, adopting something more akin to Don't be evil. That's an improvement. That's not the Bible's ethic. No, the Bible's ethic is best summarized by the question, Does it honor God?"

8. "God cares about what you accomplish with your life, but he cares a whole lot more about what your life says about him."

9. "When you feel grumpy in your obedience, normally you want to continue to obey and you want to confess that your heart is off target. Ask God to change your heart. That's what turns grumpy obedience from checkbox religion into a God-pleasing act of faith."

10. "What is underneath bitterness, hypocrisy, spiritual apathy, impatience, and worldliness is a paltry, pathetic, underestimated God."

Observation Questions

1. In Malachi 1:2-3, what specific contrast does God draw between Jacob and Esau, and what has happened to Esau's (Edom's) territory as a result?

2. According to Malachi 1:6-8, what specific accusations does God make against the priests regarding their sacrificial offerings, and what comparison does He draw to how they would treat their governor?

3. In Malachi 1:10-11, what does God say He wishes someone would do, and what does He declare about His name "from the rising of the sun to its setting"?

4. What attitude toward worship does God identify in Malachi 1:13, and how does He describe the people's response to His requirements?

5. In Malachi 2:4-7, how does God describe His original covenant with Levi, and what characteristics defined the ideal priest who walked faithfully?

6. According to Malachi 2:8-9, in what specific ways have the current priests departed from the standard God established for the Levitical priesthood?

Interpretation Questions

1. Why does God point to His election of Jacob over Esau—before either had done anything good or bad—as evidence of His love for Israel, rather than pointing to their current circumstances or blessings?

2. What does God's statement in Malachi 1:10 ("Oh, that there were one among you who would shut the doors") reveal about His view of heartless, ritualistic worship compared to no worship at all?

3. How does the contrast between what the people deserve (Edom's fate) and what they received help explain God's definition of love, and why might this be difficult for the original audience—and for us—to accept?

4. In Malachi 1:14, God declares "I am a great King" and that His "name will be feared among the nations." How does this declaration serve as both a rebuke to Israel and a promise about God's ultimate purposes?

5. How does God's purpose in eliminating the corrupt priesthood—"that my covenant with Levi may stand" (Malachi 2:4)—demonstrate that His judgment serves His faithfulness rather than contradicting it?

Application Questions

1. The sermon identified "eye roll commands" as areas where we snort at God's requirements. What specific commands or expectations from Scripture do you find yourself treating as burdensome or unnecessary, and what does that attitude reveal about your view of God?

2. The sermon challenged us to ask "Does it honor God?" rather than merely "Is it wrong?" Identify one decision you're currently facing—at work, in entertainment choices, or in relationships—and evaluate it using this question. What difference does the reframing make?

3. Raymond Flanks prayed for the prosecutor who wrongfully imprisoned him for 39 years. Is there someone who has wronged you that you have refused to pray for? What would it look like to begin praying for them this week, and what does your resistance reveal about your trust in God's justice?

4. The sermon suggested that grumpy obedience should lead to continued obedience combined with confession about our heart's condition. In what area of your Christian life are you currently obeying with resentment, and how might you bring that attitude honestly before God in prayer?

5. God's people in Malachi compared their circumstances to their dreams and concluded God had failed them. In what area of your life are you measuring God's love by your unmet expectations rather than by what you actually deserve? How might "peering over the edge" at what you deserve change your perspective?

Additional Bible Reading

1. Romans 9:6-18 — Paul directly quotes Malachi 1:2-3 and explains how God's electing love demonstrates His sovereign mercy and justice, addressing the same tensions the sermon raised about election.

2. Hebrews 7:11-28 — This passage explains how Jesus serves as a priest from an order older than Levi, fulfilling God's covenant promise while replacing the failed Levitical priesthood.

3. 1 Peter 2:4-10 — Peter declares that believers are now the "royal priesthood" God promised, showing how the covenant with Levi finds its ultimate fulfillment in the church.

4. Deuteronomy 28:1-19 — This passage contains the blessings and curses God promised Israel that form the background for the people's expectations and God's warnings in Malachi.

5. Genesis 25:19-34 — This narrative recounts the birth of Jacob and Esau and God's declaration that "the older shall serve the younger," providing the historical foundation for God's argument about His electing love in Malachi.

Sermon Main Topics

I. The Story of Raymond Flanks: A Man Without Bitterness Despite Injustice

II. Introduction to Malachi: God's Response to His Embittered People

III. God Is Love (Malachi 1:1-5)

IV. God Is Great (Malachi 1:6-14)

V. God Is Faithful (Malachi 2:1-9)

VI. Conclusion: Do Not Underestimate God

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Detailed Sermon Outline

I wonder what might turn you into a bitter person? I want to try something on for size. In 1983, a man named Raymond Flanks was arrested by the state of Louisiana for murder, a crime he said he did not commit. He was convicted and spent 39 years in prison, more than half a lifetime. Well, eventually it came to light that some very significant significant eyewitness evidence had been concealed.

And so Raymond was set free because that evidence made it clear he did not commit this crime. As he stood on the steps of the courthouse, a free man, his first comments publicly were a lament for miscarried justice.

But they weren't a lament for the miscarriage of justice against him, but for the victim's family who for 39 years had thought that the man who killed their father had been caught. And Raymond stated that he himself shared no ill will toward those who had wrongly put him in prison.

Well, as their brother Matt, up on the balcony there, watched that interview, he thought to himself, surely this guy must be a Christian. How else could he say this kind of thing? And so Matt contacted Raymond, and as soon as Matt told Raymond that he himself was a Christian, Raymond's face lit up because in prison, Raymond had come to faith in Christ. In fact, for decades while he was in prison, he had faithfully prayed for the prosecutor who withheld the evidence that should have set him free back in 1983. In part, he prayed that man would become a defense attorney, which he did.

Well, a few weeks ago, I had the privilege of meeting Raymond. Thank you, Matt. And as he told his story, there was not a hint of bitterness. Raymond is a man who believes deep down, as our hymn puts it, Whatever my God ordains is right. And in such faith, Raymond today is a man of joy.

Praise God. There are no excuses for the horrors of the injustice he suffered. It is certainly our society's responsibility to prevent things like that going forward.

But Raymond's lack of bitterness means that injustice has no shackles on his joy.

So bringing this to you, the question I have for you, Could you do the same thing? Right, Raymond's faith is available to all of us. His God is our God, but my guess is that very few of us could contemplate such magnitude of injustice without contemplating a life consumed by bitterness.

Bitterness, after all, is the corrosive residue that remains when injustice goes unanswered, be it real or perceived. But you believe that something is owed to you, you don't get it, time passes, and bitterness ensues.

So when you don't get what you think you're owed, what will protect you from becoming a bitter person?

I suggest that answer needs to be rooted less in your circumstances and more in your theology and what you believe about God. What would turn you into a better person is a God who is smaller than Raymond's God, a God who, according to the Scripture, is an underestimated God. Today, we're gonna begin a four-part series through the book of Malachi, the last book of the Old Testament, where God's people themselves have tragically underestimated their God. You'll find it in page 801 of the Pew Bible that you'll see next to you or in front of you. And this book is one that begins with the people's bitterness, one symptom of an underestimated God.

The people were bitter because they thought that God had defaulted on his promise to love them. You see, way back in the book of Deuteronomy, a thousand years before Malachi is written, when God first constituted his people Israel, he had told them that if they obeyed his commands, he would bless them.

And if they were faithless and worshiped other gods, he would cast them out of their land. And what's more, he said that these people would fail, that they would be exiled as a result. And yet he also said that when they returned to him, he will make you more prosperous and numerous than their fathers, and that he would, in fact, turn their hearts back to him. And that pretty much played out exactly as God said it would. They were faithless.

God did exile them. Seventy years later, they did return, and they rebuilt the temple to begin to obey God again. And they were sitting ready to receive this prosperity He had promised, the return to glory days.

And they kept waiting, and God didn't deliver. It seems that they'd done their part, And God hadn't done his, and that leads to bitterness. And to the prophet Malachi. Through Malachi, God reaches out to his embittered people. Really, in a way, he does nowhere else in Scripture, because in Malachi, he actually gives voice to their bitter complaints.

And he answers their complaints. And for some, eventually, he gives voice to their repentance. And that prophet Malachi was the very last thing these people heard from God for 400 years until the prophet John the Baptist arrives on the scene. In the book of Malachi, God's promise to his people's bitterness can be summed up in a phrase: Do not underestimate me. And brothers and sisters, that's the message of Malachi for us today as well, even as we wait for the things that God has promised.

Do not underestimate him. Because you see, it's not just bitterness that flows from an underestimated God. Hypocrisy, anger, impatience, spiritual apathy, worldliness, all of those are symptoms of underestimating God. All of those are present in the book of Malachi. I could have picked any one of those to start the sermon because they all lead to the same place, which is an underestimated God.

I wonder which of those symptoms of underestimating God is the one that you're most prone to. Might be a good question to answer over lunch.

Well, in this section of Malachi we're going to look at today, Malachi gives us three truths about God so that we might not underestimate him. And that's our outline for this morning. He starts by saying that God is love, first five verses of the book. That God is great the rest of chapter 1, and that God is faithful, verse 9 of chapter 2. If you're new to looking at a Bible, number one, look at it.

You'll find it very helpful to have it in front of you. Malachi is dense. I'm going to cover a lot of material. If you can follow in the Scriptures, that would be useful. Just to guide you, the big numbers are the chapter numbers, the small numbers are the verse numbers.

And if you're a note taker, take some notes. It'll help to guide your thinking and help you to profit from the time we have here together. So let's start there at the very beginning of the Malachi, that first point to see that God is love. Chapter 1, verse 1, the oracle of the word of the Lord to Israel by Malachi: I have loved you.

Says the Lord. Let's pause there. We're about to get some very severe words, severe words by the people against God, severe words from God to his people. And God's severe response seems to have worked. There's actually very few prophets where the people actually repent in real time, and we'll see that later in the book of Malachi.

So let's not discount God's severe words too quickly. But those severe words are hard to hear, so before we get them, let's just recognize that in this book, God leads with love. I have loved you, he says to an embittered people.

And what's their reply? Verse 2, I have loved you, says the Lord, but you say, How have you loved us?

Is not Esau Jacob's brother? declares the Lord. Yet I have loved Jacob, but Esau I have hated. I have laid waste his hill country and left his heritage to jackals of the desert. If Edom says, 'We are shattered, but we will rebuild the ruins,' the Lord of hosts says, 'They may build, but I will tear down, and they will be called the Wicked Country, and the people with whom the Lord is angry forever. '

Your own eyes shall see this, and you shall say, Great is the Lord beyond the border of Israel.

Little background here. The patriarch Jacob was ancestor to all of Israel. Esau was his twin brother, the father of the nation of Edom. And as we saw in that passage that Madison read to us early in our service, before these two brothers had been born, before they had done anything either good or bad, God chose the younger, Jacob, to receive the blessing that God had given to Abraham. That I will bless those who bless you and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.

Well, it's out that the two nations that emerged from these two brothers became bitter enemies. The Book of Obadiah describes how when Babylon attacked Jerusalem, Edom didn't rescue their brother. They cheered the Babylonians on. They even lent aid and helped with the massacre. That followed.

And so I think what we see in these opening verses in Malachi is the outworking of God's promise to Abraham that he would curse those who cursed his people.

But I have to say, as an answer to the people's accusation implicitly that God has not loved them, this does seem rather odd, right? God's people are impoverished, Edom is about to be destroyed. It's better to be impoverished than destroyed. But is that really proof of God's love? Right, it's like you get into an accident and you break your leg and you think, well, I suppose I could have broken both legs.

God is so loving. Right, that's true. It kind of rings hollow. So there's two things we need to notice here. The first is how Malachi emphasizes that Jacob and Esau were in exactly the same moral position before God when God chose to put his love on Jacob.

That's the point there, Esau, Jacob's brother. That's certainly where Paul takes it in the passage that Matthew read to us in Romans chapter 9. Jacob in no way deserved God's love.

Second thing to notice is that Malachi's vocabulary as he describes this downfall of Edom is borrowed from earlier prophets in the Old Testament who described Judah's restoration after exile. Words like heritage in verse 3 or shattered, but rebuilt in verse four. So these verses, if you're reading from the perspective of the people Malachi's speaking to, are not just about God's judgment on Edom, they're also implicitly about God's mercy on Israel. So what God is saying is, you think I've not loved you? Look at Edom.

That's what you deserved, but I have continued to bless you. Brothers and sisters, we underestimate God's love when we measure His love according to human standards, according to our circumstances, and when we measure our circumstances against our dreams.

The way we will grasp His love best is not when we compare what He's done to what we dream for ourselves, but when we compare what He's done to what we deserve for ourselves. Let me just encourage you maybe sometime this week to take some time to just peer over the edge, so to speak, to consider what your life would be like today and in the future had God not chosen to put his love on you. I spent a devotional time this last week in the morning just doing that, peering over the edge, thinking about what I deserve, looking at what God has given to me and considering the sweet reality of God's love.

Back to those words there in verse 3. These are bracing words: I have loved Jacob, but Esau I have hated. That's a language, as Kevin mentioned earlier, of election, right? The idea that God chooses some for himself, but he doesn't choose everyone. You see, if salvation really is dependent on God's grace alone, then it depends on God's action alone.

That means you can't have salvation by grace without this idea of election, of God's choosing love.

And yet it still makes us wonder, why does God choose that aspect of love to point to here? These people are underestimating his love. Why does he point to election, to his choosing love to reach these people? I'll give you two reasons.

First, it's God's electing love that most drives us to humility. And that's the humility these people would need if they were going to begin to understand that God had blessed them. Right? If God chose you, because you had the foresight to choose him, then you've got something you can boast about. But if God chose you before you were even born, that drives us to humility.

In fact, I would say that any concept of God's choosing love, any doctrine of election that does not drive you to humility is a faulty doctrine. It's not biblical. I appreciate how Charles Spurgeon spoke of humility in regard to this truth. He says, I believe the doctrine of election because I am quite certain that if God had not chosen me, I should never have chosen him. And I am sure he chose me before I was born or else he would never have chosen me afterwards.

And he must have elected me for reasons unknown to me, for never could I find in myself why he should have looked upon me with special love.

It drives us to humility. The second thing it does is electing love in particular helps us understand security. Right? If you did absolutely nothing to deserve God's love, then you can't do anything to lose His love. It's Father's Day, which I know is joyful for some and painful for others.

Let me just give you a positive view of fatherhood that I've had the privilege of witnessing recently, which I think illustrates this so well. Right? My family, the last in the past few years have had the privilege of falling in love with a little boy across the street who's lived with his foster mom and dad. And a few weeks ago, we were able to join them as a judge, processed his adoption. And I will never forget those beautiful words as she pronounced his new last name.

And she said that he now has all the same rights and privileges in this family as one who is naturally born. But because these dear people have chosen to love this little boy, there is nothing he can do to be more of their son, and there is nothing he can do that will make him less of his son. So with us.

We will need both humility and security, the humility and security that come from God's choosing love if we would stop underestimating his love. As John Owen wrote, the greatest sorrow and burden you can lay on the Father, the greatest unkindness you can do to Him is to doubt that He loves you.

But what about Edom? Should it bother us that God chooses some and not others?

You might say, well, God hated Edom because Edom rejected him and did all these terrible things. But God chose Jacob rather than Esau knowing that all that would happen. God made Esau knowing all that would happen. I think this side of heaven, it is inevitable these things will unsettle us. After all, it's something the apostle Paul addresses head on in that passage in Romans 9.

Where after quoting this verse from Malachi, he asks, what then shall we say? Is God unjust? The Apostle Paul certainly saw it would be unsettling for us. And to paraphrase his answer, he says to us, you, know what? God is God.

You're not. He will have mercy on whom he has mercy. He will have compassion on whom he has compassion. You just cannot squeeze the infinite God into the dimensions of human mind. It just doesn't work.

His ways are inscrutable.

Maybe you're here this morning as someone who's not a Christian and this idea of election has really bothered you. Well, I'd encourage you to talk to a Christian friend, maybe the friend who brought you, if you have no Christian friends you can talk to, talk to one of the men standing at the doors afterwards. And ask them how they process this.

But the question you want to ask them is not, How can a good God create people like Edom he knows will reject him? Because your Christian friend only knows so much about what goes on in the mind of the eternal God. Now, the question you want to ask is a personal one: How can you, who trust a God who claims to be good and yet creates people he knows will reject him. You might be surprised at the very good answers you get to that question, even if the first question remains somewhat shrouded in mystery.

Let me also address this to some of the kids who are here. If you're a kid growing up in a Christian family, particularly if you're an older kid and you're really trying to wrestle through faith for yourself in a way you didn't when you were younger, I think this is one of the hard parts about growing up in a family that believes the Bible, right? Because you know you're a sinner. That's patently obvious to you, even more to your parents. You know that you can be saved from your sin only through faith.

You've been taught that your whole life. You also know that faith comes as God's gift and only as God's gift. You can't just manufacture faith. It doesn't work that way. And so for some kids, I think lots of adults in this category as well.

It feels like you can't do anything. You're just kind of sitting there waiting for God to strike you with the lightning of faith and it's frustrating.

If you've ever been tripped up by that, let me just encourage you to take God at His word. So yes, it's true, faith is a gift from God. Yes, He has chosen before the creation of the world, those who will be his. But also he says you have a choice to make. Like Acts 16:31, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved.

Or Matthew 11:28, come to me all who labor and are heavy laden, I will give you rest.

I can't entirely explain how your choice and God's choice fit together, but then again, neither am I God. That doesn't surprise me. What I do know is that this God has said that you have a choice to make. So take him at his word and put your faith in him. If he says you can, then you can, even if you can't understand how all those pieces fit together.

And if you're not a Christian, let me address your situation again. Just going back to these words here in Malachi.

These are severe words, these are terrible words. The people with whom the Lord is angry forever.

These are true words. But my friend, these do not need to be words about you.

You've sinned, I've sinned, just like these people. In Edom. Our sin deserves that God would be angry with us forever.

No excuses are going to get around that. And yet this same judge sent his own son, Jesus Christ, to bear this penalty for us.

He died on the cross. He suffered the wrath of God so that we wouldn't have to. And he calls us to put our faith in him to repent of our sins and trust him. And not only do we have the promise that he will forgive us of our sins if we repent and believe, we have the promise that he will adopt us as his own sons. Just like Titus mentioned in that prayer of praise, he not only redeems us, he adopts us.

So that we can be His. Well, to summarize what's going on in these first five verses, God's people are saying, the problem here is God's failure to love. God says, no, no, I have loved you. Now you have underestimated my love. And then in verse 6, He turns the tables.

He says, And the problem isn't that I've failed to love you, the problem is that you've failed to love me. And that begins with our failing to grasp our second point, that God is great. Let's start reading again in verse 6. A son honors his father and a servant his master. If then I am a father, where is my honor?

If I have a master, where is my fear? Says the Lord of hosts to you, a priest who despise my name. But you say, how have we despised your name by offering polluted food upon my altar? But you say, how have we polluted you by saying that the Lord's table may be despised? When you offer blind animals in sacrifice, is that not evil?

And when you offer those that are lame or sick, is that not evil? Present that to your governor. Will he accept you or show you favor, says the Lord of hosts? And now entreat the favor of God that he may be gracious to us. With such a gift from your hand, will he show favor to any of you?

Says the Lord of Hosts. Oh, that there were one among you who would shut the doors, that you might not kindle fire on my altar in vain. I have no pleasure in you, says the Lord of Hosts, and I will not accept an offering from your hand. For from the rising of the sun to its setting. My name will be great among the nations, and in every place incense will be offered to my name and a pure offering, for my name will be great among the nations, says the Lord of hosts.

But you profane it when you say that the Lord's table is polluted and its fruit, that its food may be despised. But you say, what a weariness this is, and you snort at it, says the Lord of hosts. You bring what has been taken by violence, or is lame or sick, and this you bring as your offering. Shall I accept that from your hand? says the Lord.

Cursed be the cheat who has a male in his flock and vows it, and yet sacrifices to the Lord what is blemished! For I am a great King, says the Lord of hosts, and my name will be feared among the nations.

God's using an argument here from the lesser to the greater. If you honor your father and your master, shouldn't you honor God all that much more? But rather than honoring and fearing God, these people have descended to what you might call a checkbox religion, right? They feel good because they checked all the boxes, even though their heart is less and less in it.

The Old Testament law says that only unblemished sacrifices were acceptable. And the people who were the quality control in this matter were the priests, right? If someone had an unacceptable animal and they brought it to sacrifice, the priests were to turn it away. But these priests have fallen right in with the people. That's why God addresses the priests and in rebuking the priests who failed the quality control job, he's rebuking the people who brought those animals in the first place.

In verse 8, God sarcastically challenges the priests to treat their governor like they treat him. Will he accept you or show you favor? For a modern-day parallel, if you treat your job like you treat your church, how's that going to go down? And then verse 9, I think, is just as sarcastic. Entreat the favor of God that he may be gracious to us.

With such a gift from your hand, will he show favor to any of you? This isn't an invitation, this is a rebuke.

I want first to look at what this section says about us and then we'll look at what it says about God. And what it says about us is that this heartless, checkbox religion despises the God we claim to serve. You let that attitude bake in the hot Jerusalem sun for 400 years, and that's where you get the Pharisees. Right? Their religious acts were worse than worthless.

So much so in verse 10, God says they'd be better off shutting down the temple. I have no pleasure in you, says the Lord of hosts. I will not accept an offering from your hand. Just a side note, praise God, the Christian never has to fear God saying that, because the offering that purchased our access to God is not one we bring with our hands that we can mess up, but it's his perfect Son he offered for us. But back to these people.

They despise him by offering defective sacrifices, but they also despise him with their attitude. Right? Verse 13, you notice those words? What a weariness this is. They snort at God's requirements, requirements he gave them in mercy so that they, as sinners, could have fellowship with him, the holy God.

Right? It's only fifty years after the temple was rebuilt with joyful weeping that the people are snorting with disdain. It's been said that one generation believes the gospel and the next assumes the gospel and the next denies the gospel.

I wonder what commands you snort at. Where your attitude more suggests that God is picky, then that God is great. What are the eye roll commands for your life? But the fact is that God has given us His commands for our good. But they're not there because He's finicky.

They're there because we're foolish. We need the wisdom of His commands if we would flourish and if He would be honored.

So what do you do when you feel grumpy about obedience? Do you stop obeying because your motives are mixed? Normally that's not the right answer. No, God is looking for faith, not for perfect motives. Right?

When you feel grumpy in your obedience, normally you want to continue to obey and you want to confess that your heart is off target. Ask God to change your heart. That's what turns grumpy obedience from checkbox religion into a God-pleasing act of faith. That gets more pleasing as your heart changes. One thing I think is interesting in this section is how blind these people were to this problem.

Right? Verse 6, they say, How have we despised your name? And as a reader, I just think, Really? Right? You're giving to God the equivalent of like week-old chicken salad and you don't understand what's wrong with that?

No, they don't. And so often neither do we. For I do not underestimate our ability to convince ourselves that we're honoring God where our attitude is anything but.

We need to counter that tendency toward blindness with regular time in God's Word and transparent friendships with Christians who can see our lives beyond what we say about them. And accountability to a local church. In all this, what we see here in Malachi chapter 1 is a very different ethic than where we normally live. You see that word evil there in verse 8? But he says here that despising God, having that kind of attitude, is evil.

Or like spray painting all over one of those beautiful canvases at the National Gallery. In the Bible, good and evil are defined in relation to God. But the heinousness of our sin is not mainly the harm it does, but the lies it spews about God. Just like Matthew prayed in our prayer of confession, because God is the perfection of good. We have a world that has an ethic which is basically rooted in whatever makes me happy.

That's the question we need to ask. And many of us seek to move on from that, adopting something more akin to Google's old motto, I don't know why they changed it, Don't be evil. That's an improvement. That's not the Bible's ethic. No, the Bible's ethic is best summarized by the question, Does it honor God?

Where every action either honors God or dishonors Him.

To honor him is the definition of good. To dishonor him is the definition of evil. So let's say that you're struggling to figure out how to respond to the latest pride directive at work. The question that should guide you is not, Is it wrong? But will my response honor God?

You're having questions of conscience about whether you can get behind your boss's latest plans.

Not, Is it wrong? But, Will my participation honor God? Do you laugh at that joke at the lunch table? What do you choose to read? What do you choose to watch?

Again, the operative question is not merely, Is it wrong? But, Does it honor God? There's going to be lots of nuance there. My guess is those are not going to be easy answers to get to, but I want you to at least be asking the right question. I wonder which question best summarizes the ethos you're cultivating in your home.

Is it wrong or do we honor God? For the kids in the room, it may be a good question to ask your parents over lunch. As a kid in this family, how can I honor God?

Well, in this case, the people's conduct did not honor God. That's the whole point here. Look at the end of verse 7: God accuses the priests of saying that the Lord's table is despised. Now, I would assume that none of them actually vocalized those words, but that's what their conduct said. Similarly, God cares about what you accomplish with your life, but he cares a whole lot more about what your life says about him, which includes what you accomplish, but a lot more than that.

Too many Christians justify lives that defame God because of actions that proclaim God? What does your life say about God? And that's an important question, even if you're not a Christian. You may consider yourself to be a good person. I would challenge you to articulate whose authority defines that word good.

Does your life honor God?

That is the question against which all lives will be judged. And all this matters because our pastor says God is a great king, which is what turns our attention from us and our despising of God to him and his greatness. Just listen to verse 11. For from the rising of the sun to its setting, my name will be great among the nations, and in every place incense will be offered to my name, and a pure offering. For my name will be great among the nations, says the Lord of hosts.

And the end of verse 14, For I am a great King, says the Lord of hosts, and my name will be feared among the nations.

Be careful what tone of voice you imagine God using in delivering those words.

He doesn't feel threatened. Never felt threatened. But this is not the angry rant of a forgotten God. These words are not presumptuous, thrown out to cloak some kind of insecurity he's feeling because of his people's reaction to him. No, these words are not shouted, but stated firmly and strongly, a matter of fact summary of the inexorable fact of history that God will be feared among all nations.

That his name will be great among all nations, not just in Israel, but as we saw in verse 5, everywhere, where we have the privilege of getting in line with that great and best end of the universe, and we need to. Ancient astronomers struggled to figure out the motions of the planets until they discovered that the sun is the center, not the earth. Only the Son can anchor it all. God, stating His greatness, is not an imposition but an act of mercy because only He can anchor it all. My friends, God is a great King.

That's not up for debate. The most important question your life will ever address is whether you will choose to treat Him that way. So how can we stop underestimating the greatness of God? I'll give you four ideas. Number one, confess your sin.

Not just once a week when we pray here on Sunday morning, confess your sin regularly. Every time you confess your view of the greatness of God notches one level higher. Number two, very simply, treat Him as great. From things as small as how you pray to things as big as centering your life's ambitions on His honor, you will see Him as great when you treat Him as great.

Three, read books that describe the greatness of God. Four, that come to mind you might consider for your summer reading: Knowing God by J.I. Packer, the Pleasures of God by John Piper, The Holiness of God by R.C. Sproul, and one that's not quite as much of a classic, but it's a very quick read, Big God by Orlando Serrano, four books to think about for the summer. And then fourth, come to church.

Right, our services are designed to be reverent, where we do not treat God casually. We treat Him intimately, of course, because He calls us His friends, but we do not treat Him casually. And I'm not mainly thinking about our building or our clothing, I'm thinking about the songs that we sing and the prayers that we pray, the way we listen to God's Word, even the way we begin and end the services with silence, kind of like a moat insulating our time around God's Word from the busyness of the world outside so that we might give God the reverence that is His. Well, if you're like me, it can be easy reading through Malachi 1 to feel hopeless and helpless. God is loving.

I know that. I also know I don't see it that way all the time. God is great. I know that. So often I know that's not how I treat him.

So I read these verses and I think just like these people, I am guilty of underestimating him.

Which is why we need the first nine verses that we're going to get to next in Malachi chapter 2, where we see that God is faithful. Let me start reading there at the beginning of chapter 2. And I'll just note as we get in, it's not going to be immediately obvious how God's faithfulness is wrapped into this section, so I'm going to read it and then I'll explain a little bit.

And now, O priests, this command is for you. If you will not listen, if you will not take it to heart to give honor to my name, says the Lord of hosts, then I will send the curse upon you, and I will curse your blessings. Indeed, I have already cursed them because you do not lay it to heart. Behold, I will rebuke your offspring, and spread dung on your faces, the dung of your offerings. And you should be taken away with it.

So shall you know that I have sent this command to you, that my covenant with Levi may stand, says the Lord of hosts. My covenant with him was one of life and peace, and I gave them to him. It was a covenant of fear, and he feared me. He stood in awe of my name. True instruction was in his mouth, and no wrong was found on his lips.

He walked with me in peace and uprightness, and he turned many from iniquity. For the lips of a priest should guard knowledge, and people should seek instruction from his mouth, for he is the messenger of the Lord of hosts.

But you have turned aside from the way, you have caused many to stumble by your instruction. You have corrupted the covenant of Levi, says the Lord of hosts, and so I make you despised and abased before all the people, it is much as you do not keep my ways.

But show partiality in your instruction. The section we covered in point two was a rebuke of the priests for not restraining the sin of the people. And so, as I mentioned, it was really a rebuke for everybody. In contrast, the verses I just read are really just about the priests, the failed mediators between God and his people. They have not sought to honor God And so God says that he will send the curse upon them.

That is the curse of Deuteronomy 28 I mentioned earlier that drove them into exile in the first place. For these priests who think that curse is finally behind them, the idea it could come again would just be terrifying. But that's not all. In the second half of verse 2 and into verse 3, God gets rid of the priesthood. He says, I will curse your blessings.

That's the blessing the priest would have pronounced on the people. You've probably heard it before. The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you. The Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.

In fact, so much of the vocabulary of this section of Malachi is taken from that blessing.

Malachi is taking the familiar words of blessing and reversing them as a rebuke. And then verse 3, He will not only reverse the priestly blessing, he will eliminate the priestly offspring. And this is a part that I'm sure is really confusing at first, the part about the dung.

He will remove the priests from priestly service. Right, the dung from the sacrificial animals was the refuse of the sacrificial system. It was to be taken outside of the camp and burned because it was unclean.

So God's using this very graphic language to say that the priests are unclean with dung on their faces, thus ineligible for priestly service, and they will be taken with the dung outside the camp.

Now, why would God eliminate the priests this way? Well, he says at the beginning there, verse 1, as punishment for not honoring him, but I think much more significantly, verse 4, he says he's eliminating them so that his covenant with Levi, Levi was the ancestor of all the priests, might stand.

That is entirely unexpected. And I think that is the centerpiece of this passage. That's where we find hope in this passage, which we'll get to in a minute. Let me just keep explaining the rest of the passage. Verses 6 and 7, God describes the ideal priest who offered true instruction and who walked in uprightness, whose life and teaching were righteous.

And he contrasts that with these priests. You see, the role of a priest was really a two-way street, right? They are the mediators, mediating access from the people to God, and they're teaching God's word to the people. We saw the problem with their mediating work in chapter 1. Now we see the problem with that instructive work in chapter 2.

That's why God is concerned with both their life and their teaching. Verses 6 and 7, I think, offer a number of things we can pray about for the teachers of our own church, that they would guard both their life and their doctrine.

Let's go back to that phrase I said was the source of hope in this passage. That my covenant with Levi may stand. Verse 4.

What's this covenant he's talking about? Well, understand that you've got to go back to Numbers. A thousand years earlier in Numbers 10, the priest Phinehas acts boldly to protect the honor of God, and God makes a covenant of peace with him, that he and his descendants would be the one to make peace between God and his people as his mediators. And as the Old Testament progresses, that covenant is expanded. So in Jeremiah 33, God says that as long as day and night continue, so His covenant with Levi and His covenant with David will continue.

In verse 22 of Jeremiah 33, He says, As the host of heaven cannot be numbered, and the sands of the sea cannot be measured, so I will multiply the offspring of David, my servant, and the Levitical priests who minister to me. That's the covenant of Levi that God says he's going to be faithful to.

You see, God's people have failed and God's mediators have failed, and yet God has not failed. And God's promises have not failed. And through their disobedience and God's resultant judgment, he will be faithful to his promise to create a whole nation of priests. Which, if you recall your Bible, is where he started off earlier in the Pentateuch. And God did exactly what he said.

Just think about what happened after the book of Malachi. The Levitical priesthood and its sacrificial system was defunct the moment that Jesus on the cross said, It is finished. And that temple curtain dividing God and man was torn in two. And a generation later, as if to emphasize that this was no longer necessary, the temple itself was destroyed, and now for two In the two thousand years there has been no priesthood.

But in Jesus, God raised up a faithful priest, not from Levi, but as the book of Hebrews describes, from an order of priests older than Levi's. True instruction was indeed in his mouth. He walked in peace and uprightness like no man before him and no man since, Hebrews chapter 5. What's more, as Hebrews 13 tells us, he suffered outside the camp, taking on that disgrace of the dung, the disgrace these priests deserved and that we deserved. And Hebrews 10 tells us that he now stands at the right hand of God the Father Almighty as our perfect mediator.

But Jesus is not the fulfillment of Malachi 2:4. No God's covenant with Levi that the priests would be greater than the sands of sea and the stars in the heavens, along with the royal descendants of David that's us, right? Peter says in 1 Peter 2:9, you, are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Praise God.

So what do we make of all of this? That was a very fast sprint through the Scriptures. One thing to take away, God's ways may be mysterious, but do not underestimate his faithfulness. Right, eliminating the priests that God had given to his people hardly seems the way that we would have fixed these problems. God's ways are mysterious, so what a privilege we have standing on this side of the cross to see how God worked all this out.

Right, he did eliminate the Levitical priesthood. He inserted his own perfect priest, Jesus, God's own son, so that he might create from us that's a royal priesthood exactly as he had promised.

Are you finding his ways to be mysterious today?

If you aren't, I'm sure you have, or at the very least you're going to.

So use these verses at the end of the Old Testament to bolster your faith that though God's ways are mysterious, he is faithful. So that you will never underestimate his faithfulness. Brothers and sisters, we've messed up just like these people have. We have doubted God's love. We have profaned his greatness in ways big and small, conscious or not, in ways that are painful memories and honestly ways we have yet to discover.

We've done all this, and yet we have hope. Not the hope in our ability to correct ourselves like we can do better, but hope in his faithfulness to provide what we cannot. That is the gospel after all, isn't it? That despite our sin, we can put our trust in Jesus, the perfect mediator, and his death on the cross for us so that we might forever have fellowship with this loving and great and faithful God.

So what is it that lies beneath the attitude of bitterness? What lies beneath hypocrisy and spiritual apathy and impatience and worldliness?

Oh friends, what is underneath all of those things is a paltry, pathetic, underestimated God.

So, my friends, let us look deep into the mystery of his electing mercies that we might not underestimate his love. I have loved you, says the Lord. Let us see in the contrast between what we deserve because of our demeaning of him and how scripture describes him as a great king, something of his greatness. That we might not underestimate that greatness. And let us see in the faithful working of the past, even when faced with the mystery of the present, that he is a promise-keeping God that we might not underestimate his faithfulness.

I wonder, what steps will you take this coming week that yout might not underestimate our God. Let's pray.

Oh Father, we praise youe that yout are a revealing God.

We get ourselves caught up into knots because of the lies we believe about yout, and yet yout've given us yous Word. You sent yout Son so that we could understand the truth about yout. We pray that we would not underestimate yout. We pray in youn mercy you would show us who youo are as revealed in youn Word so that we could know youw love, we could praise youe as great, we could trust yout as faithful. We pray this in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.