Firstfruits from the Nations 3

The Global God of Malachi’s Oracle

In the book of Malachi, the LORD calls his people to account for their apathy toward him. One by one, he takes their complaints and excuses against Him and shows them to be baseless. Israel had begun to judge God regarding His fidelity to her, but in these oracles, God rightfully turns the tables and becomes the holy Judge of His people. In Malachi, we are privy to a court session between the LORD and the ethnic seed of Jacob. Yet lest we feel that we have no right to be eavesdropping, in the midst of these Israel-specific injunctions, Malachi references God’s purposes toward the wider Gentile nations no less than three times in the opening chapter of this prophecy.

The first is in regards to His hatred for Edom, which He inserts in the introduction to form a contrast with His covenant love for Jacob:

“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.” (Malachi 1:2-3)

Of course, similarly to Edom, Israel was judged by God when her cities were sacked and her people led captive to surrounding nations. But the tell-tale sign of God’s covenant love for Israel over and against her cousin nation was that He brought her back from Babylon with His strong arm in faithfulness to His promises. For Edom, there was no parallel deliverance. There was no King Cyrus issuing a decree of return. No Zerrubabal or Nehemiah returning the people to their homeland. Rather, “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.’” (1:4). Stand in awe at the mercy and the holy wrath of God.

All of this has one grand goal: the display of the global majesty and all-supremacy of God. “Your own eyes shall see this and you shall say, “Great is the Lord beyond the border of Israel” (1:5). Great indeed, in His authority and ability to judge those who profane His name.

But, praise be to God, He has purposes for the Gentile nations beyond being perpetual objects of His hatred. Indeed, the end for which He selected Abraham was that all the families of the earth would be blessed in him. This glad reality is testified to in verse 11, in the context of God’s rejection of despicable Israelite offerings.

“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” (1:11).

Some render these being verbs (absent in the Hebrew Masoretic Text) in the present, following the Greek Septuagint (LXX), but the future tense is to be preferred because (a) where there is no verb in Hebrew, the tense must be determined from the context. Here, the last verb is a future (“I will not accept” v. 10) which makes it most natural to read future tense throughout verse 11, and, (b) it is not true that sacrifices were being made in every nation under the sun at the time of the writing of Malachi, so the present would be senseless. The words of the LORD look forward to an eschatological reality – Gentile nations praising the greatness of the God of Israel.

We should not wonder at the way universal worship is described in terms of incense and offerings to God, or imagine this literally. In this oracle, universal worship is cast, quite naturally, in the rites of Old Covenant cultic worship which Israel would have understood. A more significant question involves how the opening conjunction ki (for/because) functions as a ground for what comes before it. Somehow the future reality of international worship supports why God can have no pleasure in the half-hearted offerings of His people. Perhaps part of the Jewish excuse ran this way: Though our sacrifices are blemished and our worship lax, God will not turn from us. We are His only people – His only source for worship. Where else would He go to receive offerings? To whom else would He turn to be recognized as great? Israel felt, as the people of the Covenant, that they had a monopoly on service to God. But the LORD is not confined to getting His due praises from one ethnic group.

The same logic is at work in verse 14, our third references to the nations outside of Israel. Here, God will not accept a defrauder’s sacrifice, “For I am a great King, says the LORD of hosts, and my name will be feared among the nations.” Why should a robbing, apathetic Israelite worshiper believe that God should be forced to accept his second-best offering when God is capable of, and indeed promises that he will, secure true worship from all the nations? Hear the warning of John the Baptist to a future generation in Israel that also disregarded the limitless supremacy of their Covenant God. “And do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ For I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children for Abraham” (Luke 3:8). Christ spoke similarly when he answered those Pharisees who were indignant over the worship of the multitudes in Jerusalem. “I tell you, if these were silent, the very stones would cry out” (Luke 19:40). In this case, not stones, but Gentile nations explode into worship with the silence of Israel as true children of Abraham in accordance with God’s strange and grand purposes (Romans 11:11).

Let us celebrate a God who confined his purposes to one nation not out of lack of supremacy over all, or in a kind of rivalry with other territorial deities, but only as a temporary means of preparing the way for the One who would gather worship from every tribe and nation under heaven! The great King must reign where’er the sun does its successive journeys run. He will not be content until He has seen the reward of His sufferings and realized the homage of every tongue, Jewish and Gentile, on, over and under the earth; and He has every right to it.

Let us never think that we have an exclusive right to finding happiness in God. Let us labor that the nations which God has laid on our hearts ascribe glory to him not by means of their desolation, but their celebration. Edom tasted the anger of God and in so doing demonstrated his greatness beyond the borders of Israel. Many will magnify the supremacy of God in this way – by becoming objects of His just, burning anger. But God is pleased for many out of every nation to glorify Him more directly and deliberately through worship out of consciences made clean! This is possible because Christ has once for all tasted of the curse of the covenant. He whom the Father loved was made desolate. He was shattered and laid waste. He endured all of these curses in order that He might purchase for Himself a new Israel, beloved by the LORD, gathered out of every nation from the rising to the setting sun. Let there be no corner of this globe where His glory is untold!

~~posted by Ambassador