Everything Broken Will Heal (Malachi)

Resource by Eric Weiner

Bob Dylan is exactly what you think of when you call someone a genius. God-given talent that he learned to wield like a superpower.

Normally for songwriters, you engage in some kind of writing process. You strum some notes on the guitar. Maybe you mumble through some lyrics. A line here. A line there. It’s a process.

Dylan could pop out a hit song in like 10 minutes. He has this one song that lyrically, seems pretty basic, but man if it doesn’t put words to the human condition. The first verse goes like this:

Broken lines, broken strings

Broken threads, broken springs

Broken idols, broken heads

People sleeping in broken beds…

Everything is broken^[1]

And honestly, that’s not far off from the Christian perspective. That’s pretty much our language. But it’s also true that we can get so caught up in the brokenness of our world that we forget it didn’t start that way. And it won’t end that way.

God’s fingerprints are all over us. We still see evidence of his beauty and majesty all over the place. But whether you want to call it ignorance or arrogance, we jumped at our first chance to play god. And we found out real quick that we make terrible gods. Our fingerprints of sin are all over this world, and the result is everything is broken.

And when you read the Bible, that’s exactly what you find. That’s Israel’s story. Like, God calls out Abraham and Sarah to start a great family, and later they have a grandson who’s a cheat and who grabs the reins of the family. And the whole nation’s going to be named after him.

Well, he leads a broken family that later becomes a big, broken family that ends up in slavery in Egypt.

From there, the Lord calls out a deliverer in Moses who rescues them from oppression. God gives them the Law to teach them a life of godliness. He sustains them 40 years in the wilderness with bread from heaven. He brings them into the Promised Land. He appoints Judges to rescue them from their enemies. He gives them Kings to rule them in righteousness. He gives them Priests to cleanse them of sin. He gives them Prophets to call them back to the Lord when they don’t know their right hand from their left.

And despite all of God’s provisions, they still get punished and removed from their land. And at some point, you gotta wonder what’s wrong with these people. Like why did none of that work? And if they haven’t changed yet, will they ever?

By the time we get to the final OT book of Malachi – which is where we’ll be this morning if you want to make your way there – Israel’s already come home. They’ve rebuilt the Temple. They’ve refortified their land and rededicated themselves to worship the Lord. That’s what the books of Ezra and Nehemiah were about.

But listen, these people don’t need new walls and buildings. They need new hearts that fear the Lord.

The book of Malachi is the prophetic ending of the entire OT. Malachi’s words will be the last message God’s people hear ringing in their ears for the next 400 years.

Here’s a summary of his message: God has always loved you, but you despised him. All the promises you made, you didn’t keep. So, get ready because the Lord’s going to pay you a visit. And his judgment will be fair.

How are we doing?

This morning we’re just doing a run-through, so we won’t cover everything. But the first thing I want you to see in Malachi is that:

1. Everything is broken because we’re broken.

If Malachi were to add a verse to Bob Dylan’s song from what he saw of the people in his day, he’d probably write:

Broken rams, broken priests

Broken marriages, broken feasts

Broken tithes, broken trust

People trusting in broken lusts

Everything is broken.

Let me unpack some of that for you. The book of Malachi is filled with disagreements between God and his people. They’re just not on the same page. One of the first problems we see is about:

Broken worship

The people’s worship is broken.

[Mal. 1:6-9] – “A son honors his father, and a servant his master. If then I am a father, where is my honor? And if I am a master, where is my fear? says the Lord of hosts to you, O priests, who despise my name. But you say, ‘How have we despised your name?’ — [8] 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. 9 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?

The way the sacrificial system worked in the OT, Israel would bring all kinds of animal sacrifices to the Lord. And when they brought their offering to the Temple, there were certain conditions around what was considered acceptable worship.

Part of the priestly job was to inspect the animals for any defects. In this case, the people were giving faulty offerings and the priests were accepting them. And the Lord was tired of it.

The Lord says, “Is a father not worthy of honor? Is a master not worthy of fear?

Honor – meaning we give him the highest priority because there’s none like Him. Fear – meaning we don’t step out of line because His ways are perfect.

The Lord is saying, “Have you forgotten who I am? You wouldn’t offer these gifts to your prime minister. It would be beneath him. So why are you giving it to me?”

The people feel burdened by God. They still put up with his rules but only because they still want his stuff. They’re like an entitled teenager who wants you to take them everywhere and pay for everything but gives you an eye-roll when they have to put down their phones because you asked them to clean up a mess they made.

God’s saying my laws and statutes are a gift for your good, but you act like they’re an inconvenience. I’d rather shut the doors of my house than keep getting your half-hearted worship.

[14] – 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.

Our God’s name will be made great! The ends of the earth will sing of His majesty. Do you recognize the magnitude of his worth? But church, we despise His name and give Him faulty worship when we cultivate this same attitude among ourselves.

When we say things like, I just can’t be inconvenienced with worshipping the Lord this week. Or, I just don’t have the time or interest in serving his people. I have far too many things to do. God doesn’t want me to grow weary.

Really? Worshipping the Lord is what makes you weary?

Well, no. It’s not worshipping the Lord. Honestly, it’s the people. There’s people here that I just don’t get along with. Don’t look at them. This is a safe place. I can understand that. But I want to challenge you to stop evaluating people the way the world does. Because I would hate for you to overlook the ongoing work of God. If someone is here this morning it’s either an opportunity to bear witness for Christ or to minister Christ to someone’s weary soul.

This is part of what it means to be a living sacrifice that’s holy and pleasing to the Lord. It’s one of the ways we honor the Lord.

Broken leaders

In chapter 2 God is even more direct. He says:

[1] – And now, O priests, this command is for you. 2 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.

And then if you go down to verse 6, God appointed godly leaders to walk with him like Adam and Eve walked with him in the garden before the Fall. Verse 7 says, “the lips of a priest should guard knowledge, and people should seek instruction from his mouth.” Not because he’s great but because he heralds God’s Word.

[8] – “But you have turned aside from the way. You have caused many to stumble by your instruction.”

Listen, a leader is not going to lead you to take seriously anything he doesn’t take seriously himself. We will each be held accountable for our sin, but if your leaders aren’t bringing a healthy fear of the Lord to bear in your life through the regular preaching of God’s Word and the salvation offered in Jesus Christ, then as the church, you shouldn’t accept their leadership.

A godly leader is a gift to your soul.

Hebrews 13:17 says, “Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls, as those who will have to give an account. Let them do this with joy and not with groaning, for that would be of no advantage to you.”

So pray for the leaders in God’s churches. Pray that the leaders in this church would continually surrender to our true Shepherd Jesus Christ.

You don’t think the enemy wants to compromise the pastoral role? Go find a ministry that’s bringing glory to God in Jesus’s name and I’ll show you a leader who has a target on his back.

But listen, this isn’t just about leaders. You also have a massive role to play. 1 Peter 2:9 says you are a royal priesthood chosen to “declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.”

As your pastors, we want to call you into this work as heralds of God’s glory. To make disciples to the ends of the earth because that’s His plan for you. If we stop calling you to that, then you should reject us because it probably means we’ve made ourselves more important than we are, and eventually God will reject our ministry anyway.

Broken trust

Here the Lord is talking about generosity. He’s saying, we keep our money to ourselves because we don’t think the Lord will meet our needs. And in effect, we’re saying we trust ourselves more than God.

So God says, let’s address it:

[3:8-9] – Will man rob God? Yet you are robbing me. But you say, ‘How have we robbed you?’ In your tithes and contributions. 9 You are cursed with a curse, for you are robbing me, the whole nation of you.

God deserves our first and best and when we withhold it from him we rob him of what is rightly his. So often, the Bible warns against the love of money. It’s not money that’s the problem. It’s the love of money and all the ways it twists our hearts.

See, there’s a spiritual component to our relationship with money and it’s deceitful. It takes on many forms.

Some people can’t keep money in their bank accounts. As soon as they get it, they spend it. Not for daily needs, but for pleasure. Others look at their bank accounts constantly because it’s a source of security. The higher the number, the safer they feel.

One of the safeguards God established to help us get a grip on this problem was the tithe. Tithing means giving 10% of your income away to support the priorities of the Lord. You give to support godly leaders, to sustain the ministries of the church, to help meet the needs of the community.

Today, Christians debate about the tithe. Some say the NT doesn’t say much about the tithe, so that means I can do what I want with my money. Others treat it like a requirement. They see it as a measure of your faithfulness.

In the OT, it was a requirement. But the tithe was never meant to be a checkbox for faithfulness. And it’s true that the NT doesn’t say much about tithing.

But let me put it like this: The tithe was meant to be a safeguard. It was a way to help keep people from sin. But in Christ, the tithe has been transformed. We don’t need the same requirement, but that doesn’t mean the practice is gone.

Tim Keller says, “We could never expect God would say his New Testament people, with greater blessings and greater privileges, should expect to give less than the Old Testament people of God.”

People who have been changed by the gospel don’t become less generous, they become more. They just don’t need requirements to push them to do what they now find joy in doing. Tithing is no longer the measure of our generosity, it’s the starting point.

Listen, if giving is good for our spiritual health it just doesn’t fit that God would want us to stop doing it. He wants us to care about the proclamation of the gospel. He wants us to care about the health of his church. He wants us to seek the good of the city for His namesake.

And if those things aren’t happening, it says that we just don’t care about the things of God like we say we do. And if that’s the case, we need a greater measure of the gospel at work in us.

[10] God says – Bring the full tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. And thereby put me to the test, says the Lord of hosts, if I will not open the windows of heaven for you and pour down for you a blessing until there is no more need.

See, we don’t give to God because He has need. We give because we need to put our money where our mouth is. And giving is one way we get God’s priorities into our hearts.

God wants to open the floodgates of heaven where every blessing flows. We give because we believe He’ll do it.

So first, we’ve been saying everything is broken because we are – our worship, our leaders, our misplaced trust.

2. Broken people can’t save themselves.

God’s complaints against his people don’t come out of nowhere. About 100 years before Malachi, Ezra and Nehemiah led the nation in a national revival. They made a covenant with God. They put the whole agreement in writing.

The book of Nehemiah records the whole thing. God has receipts for every broken promise. In Nehemiah 10 the people say things like:

[30] – “We will not give our daughters to the peoples of the land or take their daughters for our sons.” We didn’t have time to get into all of that, but they don’t. Malachi 2:11says, “…Judah has profaned the sanctuary of the Lord, which he loves, and has married the daughter of a foreign god.”
[38-39] – “…And the Levites shall bring up the tithe of the tithes to the house of our God, to the chambers of the storehouse…We will not neglect the house of our God.” But they do neglect the house.

God and his people make promises to each other and neither of them ever seem to change. God is consistently faithful and we are consistently not.

I remember getting in trouble a lot as a kid and asking my parents for second chances all the time. Usually, because I didn’t want the punishment that was coming. Or I didn’t want to miss out on something fun that would rightly be taken away.

My parents have jokingly said, “We want nothing more than for you to have the kind of children we had in you.”

On this side of the table, I realize that my cries of “not fair” and “give me a second chance” are like an insult to the one who’s given me more chances than I can count.

In Malachi 3:7 God summarizes the sinful condition of Israel, but it could also be a summary of the entire OT – From the days of your fathers you have turned aside from my statutes and have not kept them. Return to me, and I will return to you, says the Lord of hosts.

Every generation that has seen the light of day has at some point in its history proven to be unfaithful. We are like a broken record that’s been left on repeat. We can’t fix ourselves.

So what’s the solution? Do we just need God to give us another chance? Another reform? A new leader? More repentance? How many times will God go through this cycle with sinful people expecting something different?

And then, as I said before, the OT closes with people left in this condition. 400 years they wait for God to speak again. That’s a long time to wait.

So let me end by offering you the same hope God leaves his people with.

3. Everything broken will heal.

There’s a solution to our brokenness. There’s a remedy for sin.

At the beginning of chapter 3, Malachi says, “Behold, I send my messenger, and he will prepare the way before me. And the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple; and the messenger of the covenant in whom you delight, behold, he is coming, says the Lord of hosts.”

The messenger talked about here is John the Baptist. And the entire purpose of his ministry is twofold. FIRST, he calls us to repent. At this point, it should be no secret why the gospels begin with a call for repentance. Our sin-sick hearts have been half-hearted in worship, have rejected God’s Word, and have put our trust in ourselves above the Lord. We need to run away from that.

The second purpose of John’s ministry is to call people to look to Christ for the forgiveness of sins. John baptizes in water. Jesus baptizes in the Holy Spirit. It’s the Spirit of the living God that gives you the power to love the Lord your God with all your heart.

And then later in chapter 4 Malachi says – [1-2] – “For behold, the day is coming, burning like an oven, when all the arrogant and all evildoers will be stubble. The day that is coming shall set them ablaze, says the Lord of hosts, so that it will leave them neither root nor branch. 2 But for you who fear my name, the sun of righteousness shall rise with healing in its wings. You shall go out leaping like calves from the stall.”

And then the book closes with words of curse and destruction. It’s a sobering message that the Lord himself is coming in judgment. Every single thing is going to be brought to light before a righteous and holy God.

See, we need the same thing Israel needs. We need someone who can reverse the curse and heal us of our sin.

Notice the contrast in those verses. The Day of the Lord’s coming will be like a furnace for evildoers. But for those who fear the Lord, it will be like the Sun of Righteousness rising above them. They will dance under the wings of his healing power.

Either you will let God’s work purge you or purify you. Either you will trust in yourself or you will cling to the saving power of God in Christ. Those who reject God will hate the day of God’s coming because they hate Almighty God. And those who love him will celebrate his coming because they’ll know that He’s saved them.

Maybe that’s confusing for you because you wonder how can God love sinners and still hold them accountable for sin?

Don Carson says, “Do you want to know where God’s justice is most powerfully demonstrated? On the cross. Do you want to know where God’s love is most powerfully demonstrated? On the cross. There Jesus, the God-man, bore hell itself, and God did this both to be just and to be the one who declares just those who have faith in him.”

On the Cross, people who have been eternally broken find the power to be eternally healed.

Or TK puts it this way: Every other treasure in the world will make you give up something to purchase it. But Jesus is the only treasure that died to purchase you.

Now what does that say about you? It says that God so treasures you, that he laid his life down to heal you. To free you from sin forever. And when that truth grips you. You sing. You dance like calves released from their stall. You rejoice. You give generously for the freedom you have in Christ. You’d give anything for others to experience that too.

^[1] Works Consulted:

“Malachi: Healing Love” – Greear
“The Gospel and Your Wealth” – Keller
“Justice Promised” – Chandler
Malachi – TGC Commentary – Harmon
Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi: An Intro & Commentary – Hill

Other videos in this series: