The coming of John the Baptist and Christ, and their work
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📚“See, I will send my messenger 📖, and he will prepare the way before me. And the Lord, whom you seek, will suddenly come to his temple; the messenger of the covenant 📖, whom you delight in. See, he is coming”, says the LORD of hosts.2 📚“But who can endure the day of his coming? And who will stand when he appears? For he is like a refiner’s fire 📖, and like a washerman’s soap.
3:2 The language here suggests judgment rather than grace. Compare Mal 4:1-5; Isa 2:10-21; Joel 2:11; Rev 6:15-17.⚜
3 📚And he will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver 📖, and he will purify the sons of Levi, and refine them like gold and silver, that they may offer to the LORD an offering in righteousness 📖. 4 📚Then the offering of Judah and Jerusalem will be pleasant to the LORD, as in the days of old, and as in former years.
3:4 This seems to mean Judah and Jerusalem as a whole. This was not fulfilled at Christ’s first coming. Compare Matt 23:37-39.⚜
God’s justice will be at work, an appeal to turn back to God
5 📚“And I will come near you for judgment 📖, and I will be a swift witness against the sorcerers 📖, and against the adulterers 📖, and against perjurers 📖, and against those who oppress the wage earner in his wages, the widow, and the fatherless, and who turn aside the foreigner 📖 from his right, and do not fear me 📖, says the LORD of hosts.
6 📚“For I am the LORD. I do not change 📖. Therefore you sons of Jacob are not consumed 📖. 7 📚Even from the days of your fathers you have gone astray from my ordinances, and have not kept them. Return to me 📖, and I will return to you, says the LORD of hosts. “But you say, ‘How 📖 shall we return?’
The people robbed God, and paid the penalty
8 📚“Will a man rob God? Yet you have robbed me. “But you say, ‘How have we robbed you?’ “In tithes and offerings. 9 📚You are cursed 📖 with a curse, for you, this whole nation, have robbed me.
3:8-9 In Mal 1:14 God called some of them “deceivers”. Now He calls all of them robbers. They had robbed God by keeping for themselves what belonged to Him. They did this in the matter of tithes and offerings. See Lev 27:30; Num 18:21, 24. Tithing is not a command given to Christians now. Believers are not under the law but under grace – Rom 6:14. So God appeals to us to give on the basis of grace – 2 Cor 8:12; 9:6-7. But surely grace and love working in our hearts will not teach us to give less than Jews under the law (1 Cor 16:2; 2 Cor 8:1-4). A tenth is the very least believers should give to God and His work. They should recognize that they and all they have belong to the Lord – 1 Cor 6:19-20, and give accordingly. Notes on giving at 2 Cor 9:15.⚜
10 📚Bring all the tithes into the storehouse 📖, that there may be food in my house, and test me 📖 now in this, says the LORD of hosts 📖: See if I will not open the windows of heaven for you, and pour you out such blessing that there will not be room enough to receive it. 11 📚And for your sakes, I will rebuke that which devours, and it will not destroy the produce of your ground; nor will your vine in the field cast its fruit before time, says the LORD of hosts.
3:11 God has many ways of blessing His people. All nature is completely in His control.⚜
12 📚And all nations will call you blessed, for you will be a delightful land, says the LORD of hosts.
Arrogance revealed in the words of the people
13 📚“Your words have been harsh against me, says the LORD. “Yet you say, ‘What have we spoken 📖 against you?’
14 📚“You have said, ‘It is vain to serve 📖 God’, and ‘what profit is it that we have kept his charge, and that we have walked mournfully before the LORD of hosts? 15 📚So now we call the arrogant blessed. Yes, the evildoers are established. Yes, those who test God escape.’ ”
3:15 Job 21:7-15; Ps 73:3-12. Men make mistakes like this in their thinking because of ignorance of God’s coming judgment.⚜
God heard the words of those who feared Him
16 📚Then those who feared the LORD spoke often with one another, and the LORD listened, and heard 📖, and a book 📖 of remembrance was written in his presence for those who feared the LORD 📖, and who thought about his name.
17 📚“And they will be mine 📖”, says the LORD of hosts, “on that day when I make up my jewels 📖. And I will spare them 📖, as a man spares his own son who serves him. 18 📚Then you will again discern between the righteous and the wicked, between him who serves God and him who does not serve him.
3:18 The time of judgment will make this distinction clear. Compare Matt 25:31-46; John 12:26. Observe that the righteous serve God, the wicked do not. So we can see what God thinks of a person’s character by what he is doing or not doing. Then is a person who has no desire to serve God, no matter how moral and ethical he may be in many matters, actually wicked in God’s sight?⚜