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The Importance of Reverence for God

1. Text: Mal. 1:6-11.

2. Malachi is the last book in the OT.

   1. After Malachi, God did not speak again until John the Baptist appeared over 400 years later.

   2. The message of Malachi (whose name means "My Messenger") was God's last word to Israel prior to the approach of the kingdom of the Messiah.

   3. It is a little book of terrifying warnings and glorious hope -- just as relevant and powerful today as it was in about 435 B.C. when it was first presented.

   4. The spiritual conditions confronted by Malachi are distressingly similar to some of our own.

3. The Restoration period, with which Malachi deals, began with the return of the Jews from Babylon.

   1. The decree of Cyrus in 538 B.C. had allowed the Jews to return to rebuild Jerusalem.

   2. Those who returned did so in several groups: the first under Zerubbabel, and later others under Ezra and Nehemiah.

   3. Against serious difficulty, these returnees repopulated Jerusalem and restarted the temple worship.

   4. Spurring the people on to complete their work were the prophets Haggai and Zechariah.

4. Malachi's preaching was toward the end of the Restoration period.

   1. Those who came back first had hardship, but they had the excitement of a work in its early stages.

   2. As the years came and went, however, disillusionment and disinterest set in.

   3. By the time Ezra and Nehemiah arrived, social and spiritual conditions dangerously low.

   4. The walls of the city still lay demolished -- but worse, the people's hearts called for urgent repair.

   5. So "the burden of the word of the Lord to Israel by Malachi" (Mal. 1:1) addressed the spiritual needs of Israel in the time of Ezra and Nehemiah, about 100 years after the first Jews had returned from Babylonian exile.

5. Reading Ezra, Nehemiah, and Malachi together, we can get an idea of the problems of the day.

   1. Spiritual apathy - Mal. 1:2,13; 4:6.

   2. Corruption of the priesthood - Neh. 13:4-9,28-31; Mal. 1:6; 2:1-9; 3:3,4.

   3. Degeneracy in worship - Mal. 1:7-14.

   4. Withholding of tithes and offerings - Neh. 10:32-39; 13:10-14; Mal. 3:8-12.

   5. Breaking of the Sabbath - Neh. 10:31; 13:15-22.

   6. Cynicism and lack of moral discrimination - Mal. 2:17; 3:13-15,18.

   7. Disregard of God's marriage law - Ezra 9:1,2; Neh. 10:30; 13:23-28; Mal. 2:10-16.

   8. Social injustice - Neh. 5:1-13; Mal. 3:5.

6. Against these sins, Malachi sounds the trumpet call of God's righteous judgment.

   1. The Lord is coming to purge and purify His people - Mal. 3:1-3.

   2. The day of the Lord's coming will consume with a burning that will leave the ungodly "neither root nor branch" (Mal. 4:1).

   3. But that will be a day of blessing for the truly reverent: "To you who fear My name, the Sun of righteousness shall arise with healing in His wings" (Mal. 4:2).

7. The expression "fear My name" is of key importance in Malachi.

   1. Back of each specific rebuke is the basic charge: the people had simply failed to fear God.

   2. The real sickness was that the Lord was no longer being honored.

   3. The trouble was not unlike that of the Gentiles described by Paul: "Although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful" (Rom. 1:21).

   4. So Malachi is an appeal for God's people to give Him the REVERENCE that He is due.

I. WHAT REVERENCE MEANS

1. In Malachi, several different expressions describe the people's failure to reverence God.

   1. God asked "Where is My honor? . . . Where is My reverence?" (Mal. 1:6).

   2. He charged Israel with having "despised My name" (Mal. 1:6).

   3. He said, "My name shall be great among the nations . . . But you profane it" (Mal. 1:11,12).

   4. He rebuked the priests for having refused to "give glory to My name" (Mal. 2:2).

   5. He promised that those who "do not fear Me" (Mal. 3:5) would be punished.

   6. On the other hand, the righteous remnant who would be blessed by the Lord are "those who feared the Lord" (Mal. 3:16) -- God said they were those "who fear My name" (Mal. 4:2).

2. To reverence God is to "hallow" Him, to treat Him as holy.

II. ONE IMPORTANT REASON WE MUST SHOW REVERENCE FOR GOD

1. Malachi said his brethren had failed to uphold God's honor "among the nations" (Mal. 1:11,12).

   1. Nehemiah asked, "Should you not walk in the fear of our God because of the reproach of the nations, our enemies?" (Neh. 5:9).

   2. The most dramatic punishments of God in the Bible are those where reverence had not been shown to God by those who business it was to do that very thing - e.g. Num. 20:12; Lev. 10:1-3.

2. What about today? Do our actions encourage deep respect for God in the minds of other people?

   1. We may not show blatant irreverence by obvious sacrilege, profane speech, etc.

   2. But in more "respectable" ways, we may show that we don't take the Lord all that seriously.

3. Yet there is no greater help that we could give to the cause of the Lord than to faithfully reverence God before the watching eyes of the world. Cf. Ezek. 36:23.

III. SOME THINGS WE CANNOT DO IF WE TRULY REVERENCE GOD

1. We cannot be indifferent to God.

   1. God is the center of all reality -- there is no more important question than our relationship to Him.

   2. God will not be treated as a peripheral concern, as if He mattered somewhat, but not very much.

   3. Our service must be "with reverence and godly fear" -- He is "a consuming fire" (Hb. 12:18-29).

2. We cannot accommodate God to ourselves.

   1. We often attempt to domesticate God, to tame Him, to cut Him down to size.

   2. We wish to make God respectable, to make His will convenient.

   3. We work at fitting God to our lifestyle.

   4. In short, we trifle with God: we presume to serve Him on our terms.

   5. But real reverence means fitting ourselves to God, not vice versa - Mk. 8:34-38.

3. We cannot confine God to one compartment of life.

   1. We try to put God in a box, confining Him to the "religious" part of our lives -- as if the "secular" part were none of His business.

   2. To reverence God, however, is to make an unconditional commitment to His will - Col. 3:17.

4. We cannot mock God.

   1. We treat God with contempt when we act as if His commandments can be safely disregarded. Cf. Psa. 10:4,6,13; 14:1.

   2. Reverence means taking God very seriously when He says He will punish sin - Gal. 6:7,8.

IV. WHY REVERENCE IS SO IMPORTANT

1. Irreverence is terrible enough by itself -- but it is also the cause of most other sins.

2. At the root of almost all our specific problems is the fact that we just don't honor God as we should.

   1. Problems in our interpersonal relationships, for example, stem from defective attitudes toward God.

   2. Ultimately, there is not even any peace within our own hearts without reverence -- the person will not be able to respect himself who does not truly respect God.

3. Whatever specific sins may be in our lives, overcoming them almost always involves two basic things:

   1. Gaining a proper concept of the character of God.

   2. Properly relating ourselves to God's true character.

4. With respect to our relationship to God, there is no more important idea than the reverence of God - Eccl.
   12:13; 2 Cor. 7:1.

V. THE DIFFICULTY OF BEING HONEST ABOUT IRREVERENCE

1. Those rebuked by Malachi for irreverence were not atheists or outwardly irreligious people.

   1. They were continuing to "worship" God, and they thought of themselves as being quite reverent.

   2. It was "churchgoing" folk whom the Lord charged with irreverence. Cf. Mt. 15:8; Tit. 1:16.

2. Malachi's people were not only "out of touch" with God, they were out of touch with the fact that they were out of touch!

   1. To every charge of disrespect, the people answered: "In what way have we done that?" Cf. Mal. 1:6,7.

   2. Often, those guilty of insulting God in the worst way are not aware of what they are doing -- they do not see themselves as they truly are. Cf. Sardis (Rev. 3:1) and Laodicea (Rev. 3:15-19).

   3. One of the worst things about dishonoring God is the progressive blindness that it causes.

3. So how honest are we about ourselves in relation to God's honor? To what extent are we willing to confront the truth about our real relationship to Him?

Conclusion

1. In Malachi's day, it was the inner character and spirit of the Lord's people that needed "rebuilding." What about in our day?

2. It is no coincidence that Malachi's call to reverence is the Lord's last word in the OT.

   1. The NT opens with a call to repentance: with the kingdom of heaven "at hand," both John the Baptist (Mt. 3:2) and Jesus (Mt. 4:17) are preaching that only those who repent will be ready to enter the kingdom.

   2. If people cannot be ready for the kingdom without repentance, can they be ready for repentance without reverence?

   3. Was not Malachi anticipating the messianic call to repentance by calling for the reverence that would be the necessary precondition for repentance?

3. Whether any of us, in the end, have been among those who honor the Lord, the Lord will ultimately defend His own honor - Mal. 1:11. Cf. Isa. 45:23 (Rom. 14:11); Phil. 2:9-11.

   1. The Jews of Malachi's day looked forward to the coming of the Messiah; yet, for most of them, that coming would be something horribly different from what they expected - Mal. 3:1-3.

   2. Only those who truly respected the Lord would find that day to be one of blessing and joy - Mal. 3:16,17.

   3. Today we who are the true "Israel of God" (Gal. 6:16) are looking for the return of the Lord - 2 Pt.
      3:10-13.

   4. If we have not respected God any more than the Jews to whom Malachi preached, what will that day hold for us?

   5. "Who can endure the day of His coming? Who can stand when He appears?" (Mal. 3:2).

4. Going to heaven requires an utterly serious, diligent approach to the matter - 1 Pt. 1:13-17. Cf. 2 Tim. 2:15; 1 Pt. 3:15.

5. Wonderful blessings await us when we relate ourselves to God in real reverence - Mal. 3:16-4:2.