207 - Malachi: The Last Old Testament Prophet
- Gwen Diaz
- Jul 26, 2022
- 3 min read
Updated: Jun 10
JULY 26 - Nº 207 Nehemiah 13; Malachi 1 – 4
The Jews who returned to Judah from Persia had rebuilt the Temple with the help of Zerubbabel. They had completed the walls of Jerusalem under the leadership of Nehemiah. They had been taught the Laws of God by Ezra the priest, and they had renewed their covenant with God. Now it was time for Nehemiah to leave Judah and return to Persia to resume his duties in the palace.
Unfortunately, once Nehemiah left, it didn’t take long for the people and the priests to wander away from their faith. They stopped obeying the laws that God had given them through Moses and ignored the covenant they had just renewed. Once again, the men married women from other faiths and began worshiping false gods. Religious celebrations quickly became nothing more than empty rituals with unworthy sacrifices. The people cheated on their tithes and neglected their offerings. Even the priests became corrupt. They focused more on fulfilling their own desires than on ministering to the people they were supposed to serve.
Yet these former refugees were upset that they weren’t experiencing the amazing blessings God had promised through prophets like Haggai and Zechariah (see #198 - July 17). They kept waiting for their Messiah to come and destroy all their enemies, and they were annoyed that he was taking so long.
God sent one last prophet to warn His people to return to Him. Through Malachi He explained that He had not stopped loving them.The reason they were not receiving His blessings was because they kept on sinning!
God promised that if the Israelites repented and returned to Him with sincere hearts, He would pour out His blessings from heaven. But their hearts remained hard, and most of the people refused to listen to anything His prophet had to say! Every time Malachi explained how sinful they had become, the people arrogantly responded, "Come on, it's really not that bad."
Fortunately, God's message made sense to a few people. They decided to write their names on a scroll. They wanted God to remember that they had chosen to honor Him.
God explained that a great day of judgment was coming. On that day, the wicked who refused to listen to Him would be destroyed, but those whose names were written down would become His treasured possession. Their lives would be filled with joy. God also promised that when it was time for the Messiah to come, He would send a messenger to prepare the world so that everyone could be ready to greet him.
Then God stopped communicating with His people. For 400 years not a single prophet of God spoke or ministered in Israel! Scholars refer to this time in Israel’s history as “The 400 Silent Years.”
But just because God chose not to reveal Himself in any way during this time, doesn't mean that He was absent. Behind the scenes He was moving in great and sometimes mysterious ways to prepare the world for the coming of His Son—Jesus, the Messiah of Israel.
At the end of “The 400 Silent Years,” John the Baptist appeared on the scene in the wilderness of Judah. He was the messenger God sent to prepare the world for the Messiah.
It's easy to read the book of Malachi and think, “How could those Jewish refugees forget all the amazing things God had done for them so quickly?"
"How could they question His love and ignore their own promises to Him so easily?"
"How could they dare try to justify themselves so belligerently?”
But don’t we often do the very same things? Before we question God’s goodness, we need to carefully examine what is going on
inside our hearts!
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